About 88% of respondents to a recent survey admitted to purchasing products after watching a brand in a video. That’s hardly surprising—ever watched a movie and felt the urge to buy the products used by your favorite characters? That’s how BMW got $240m in sales with Bond, and Red Stripe saw a 53% sales hike after Tom Cruise drank the beer in The Firm.
And that’s just some clever ad placement!
Imagine watching a movie or an ad and being able to buy your favorite product or, better yet, a complete outfit right there and then. That’s how Ted Baker sold $70,000 worth of goods in only 12 hours!
Whether it’s about promoting a new product or guiding consumers along the buyer’s journey, video content can be the key to a successful e-commerce strategy.
Of course, you’ll need a well-planned video marketing strategy tailored to your goals and target audience to ace your sales KPIs. In this article, we’ve discussed 15 ways videos can improve the online shopping experience for your customers. We’ve also shared some outstanding examples for your inspiration and tips on using interactivity to further enhance your customers’ shopping experience.
Table of Contents
1. Explaining Your Product
2. Addressing Pain Points
3. Assisting Customers in the Buyer’s Journey
4. View Product From Different Angles
5. Captures the Audience’s Attention
6. Personalizes Content for the Audience
7. Increases Engagement
8. Improves Customer Support
9. Enables Soft Selling
10. Saves Customers Time
11. Builds Trust With Reviews and Testimonial Videos
12. Increases Conversion Rates
13. Boosts Consumer Confidence
14. Helps Customers Discover New Products
15. Establishes Brand Positioning
1. Explaining Your Product
Explainer videos are ideal for helping customers decide whether they want to buy a product.
It’s no surprise that 73% of consumers are more likely to purchase after watching videos explaining a product.
Let’s say you launch an e-commerce store. Instead of writing a long-form blog about your brand, you can create a video that describes your brand in a fun and engaging way.
Google, for example, created a video to promote Nest Thermostat E to showcase its unique features. They created an engaging video supported by a storyline to make it interesting to watch. The voiceover explains the benefits of using the product both for people and the environment without pushing viewers to purchase.
Make It Interactive With COTU: You can add links to pages where viewers can learn more about different product features as you explain them in the video. For example, you can link to the page where you explain how your product protects the environment in greater detail.
Best Practices:
- Keep It Short. An explainer video is all about providing a quick overview of your product. Make sure you don’t stray away from your core message and make every second of the video count.
- Highlight Core Product Features. Keep your explainer video simple by focusing on the features that make your product shine. Explaining too many features can bore or confuse the audience. You can add clickable links to direct viewers to pages where they can get more product details.
- Use Advanced Branding. Weave brand elements naturally into the video to reinforce your audience’s subconscious connection with your brand. For example, as our product grows, you can include your brand colors and logo to help build customer affinity with your brand.
2. Addressing Pain Points
People will be attracted to your product or service if it can solve their problems or add value to their lives. Videos can make it easier for you to demonstrate to your potential customers how your products can make a difference.
By learning their pain points backwards and forwards, you also gain your audience’s trust by proving that you understand their challenges.
Native Union decided to promote their charging cable by focusing on their audience’s struggle to keep their cables untangled. The video is relatable and easy to understand and promotes the product effortlessly by concentrating on a common challenge.
The use of phrases such as “most of us charge our phones at home” or “designed to remove these frustrations” makes customers feel that they share a common struggle—this is a smart tactic to motivate the consumer to try the product.
Make It Interactive With COTU: Rather than simply telling customers how to solve their problems, give them a link to purchase the solution directly in the video!
Best Practices:
- Learn About Your Audience First. Your video will only be relatable if you know what your audience wants from you. Talk to your customer support team and review the most common requests to create content that addresses the most important pain points.
- Dare To Be Different. A clever script can be fun and engaging and still be relatable for your audience. Think outside the box and explore creative ways to humanize your brand to connect with your audience.
- Go Beyond the Obvious Pain Points. Grab your audience’s attention by proving that you’ve done your research. Focus on the pain points that are not too obvious, making it easier for you to stand out from your competitors.
3. Assisting Customers in the Buyer’s Journey
Interactive videos can get a customer closer to a purchase by guiding them through the sales funnel using various clickable elements. You may highlight key features of a product and add links to web pages where viewers can learn more about the product. Interactive videos, such as shoppable videos, can minimize the friction in the customer’s journey by allowing them to reach the product page directly from the video.
More impressively, shoppable videos can lead to a 9x increase in the purchase intent of the viewers.
In the absence of clickable links, viewers will need to first find the products on the internet or the brand page, and only then can they buy them or learn more about them. According to Interactive Video Expert Annie Hinners, shoppable videos “bridge the gap between the [consumer’s] research process and the actual product.”
In this video, COTU has demonstrated a few ways to use product overlays and clickable elements to help customers find the information they need.
For example, for a recipe video, you can include expandable cards with recipe instructions, ingredients with a link to the recipe post, and a list of equipment with a link to each product’s page. Viewers at different stages of the buyer’s journey can select the action that best suits their needs.
Best Practices:
- Ensure a Non-intrusive Viewing Experience. All video elements should complement each other to facilitate a purchase. The clickable elements should not disrupt but instead flow with the viewing experience to maximize the chances of conversion.
- Help Customers Find What They Want. Use interactive elements to display product info and Buy Now buttons to make it easy for customers who are ready to buy. However, you can also provide links to relevant blogs or pages where reluctant customers can learn more about the product (such as a demo page).
- Make the Purchase Effortless. The ultimate goal is to get users to buy the product. Think about how your interactive video can facilitate a purchase. Use a compelling CTA and include all the necessary details to motivate the consumers to click through.
4. View Product From Different Angles
Consumers want to know what a product looks like from all angles before they buy it. It has always been a challenge for online retailers to simulate product inspection similar to the way it’s possible in a physical store.
A video can give a complete view of a product effortlessly. It can show the product from all angles as the voiceover describes the features/parts in sight. Consumers can enjoy a closer view of the product and complete their purchase with full confidence.
Apple knows how to create appealing videos to show its products in great light and extreme closeups. The promotion video of the iPhone 14 Pro allows viewers to have a closer look at the product from multiple angles. The viewers get to see a realistic view of the product, while the narration helps them discover new features that enhance the product experience.
Make It Interactive With COTU: You can add more details or highlight associated features of the product to match the product feature that’s in view. You can also direct viewers to the product pages of accessories related to the featured products.
Best Practices
- Show Close-ups in Slow Motion. Let viewers have a good look at the product without having to pause the video every other second. It will also allow viewers ample time to read and interact with the info cards and decide whether they want to click the CTA.
- Say That the Video Is Interactive at the Start. Let your customers know they’re about to watch an interactive video so they’ll know what to expect. You may also want to explain how they can interact with it if needed.
- Add a CTA. Product videos do an excellent job at sustaining the viewer’s attention and helping them decide whether the product suits them. Adding CTAs to these types of videos can successfully boost sales. You can include an end screen that directs interested leads directly to the product page.
5. Captures the Audience’s Attention
Every video should capture your audience’s attention right away. Videos should be interesting enough that your audience wants to watch more than a few seconds.
What can make a video stand out? Make it relatable to your target audience instantly. You can also add a touch of humor, focus on a message that sets you apart from your competition, or create a unique storyline. You can also involve interactive elements to grab the audience’s attention and make it more interesting for the consumers.
In this COTU video, right at the beginning, we can see the product, a mountain bike, in action on rugged terrain. Intense action and upbeat music can rush adrenaline, reminding viewers of their last adventure in a similar landscape. While they’re still immersed in nostalgia, the expandable product cards entice them to learn more about the product, which may lead to more click-throughs.
Best Practices:
- Make It Relatable. Showcase your products in a real-life scenario familiar to your target audience to make it more relatable for them. Familiar settings in the video can fire up your audience’s imagination, especially when you want to immerse them in the video experience.
- Add Interactive Elements Right in the First Few Seconds. As you capture your audience’s attention in the first seconds, engage them instantly by adding interactive overlays to give them more information about the product. Your click-through rates will likely increase when they’re immersed in the video and enticed by the product features.
- A/B Test the Engagement. We all start with assumptions about what works, but we still need to validate them. Create an interactive video and share it with your audience to measure the engagement compared with a non-interactive video to see how effective they can be.
6. Personalizes Content for the Audience
Customers love personalized content. Interactive videos offer them a viewing experience that’s in their control all the time, which can boost customer loyalty and conversions.
Personalization can help you improve your conversion rate by understanding where customers spend the most time. According to a 2021 report, brands that master personalization can drive 40% more revenue than other brands. Look at the data and optimize the user experience with every new video.
You can use video analytics data to understand your target audience better and fine-tune your campaigns to meet audience expectations. You can also use A/B testing to further zero in on their preferences for footage features, voiceover, expandable card text, CTAs, and more.
Make It Interactive With COTU: You can use the information from COTU’s robust analytics to offer your customers personalized product recommendations with CTAs and product info tailored for different audience segments. You can also create product sets in a way that more popular products are included in each group to boost engagement.
Best Practices:
- Make Personalization Matter. Personalization requires knowing your customers’ preferences like the back of your hand. Use ample experimentation to keep the guesswork out of your personalization efforts and ensure their effectiveness.
- Segment Your Audience. Segment your audience and use experiments and analytics to understand which products are most popular among each group. Suggesting to each audience group the kind of products they like the most can increase your engagement and conversion rates.
- Surprise Your Customers. It’s the little things that make customers stay loyal to a brand. You can use interactivity (or the data collected from interactive videos) to delight your loyal customers by directing them to discount pages or bundle offers with their favorite products. They can click on the links in the video and reach the respective pages instantly.
7. Increases Engagement
You know a video is successful when your customers watch it until the end. Engagement is a crucial metric to determine a video’s success. It’s the easiest way to tell whether your content resonates with your audience.
People spend 1.4X more time on pages that include a video than those without them. Add an interactive element to it, and you will have the perfect recipe for success.
In this video, COTU portrays a young soccer enthusiast. The video follows a single theme and shows many related products in action. Users can learn more about the products by expanding the cards that appear seamlessly without interrupting the viewing experience. Finally, the end screen allows users to explore all the products featured in the video.
Best Practices:
- Stick To A Single Theme. You can boost engagement by keeping your storyline focused. You may spin it around a single set of products or related product groups. Alternatively, you can use a common theme that ties your target audience segment together.
- Make The Shopping Experience Part Of The Story. Finding the balance between a good story and shoppable elements is crucial to engage the audience and converting them into sales successfully. You can use A/B testing to find your sweet spot.
- Use The End Screen To Boost Conversion. Too many interruptions during the viewing experience can undermine user engagement. End screens come in handy in such situations. You can showcase all the featured products at the end of the video with shoppable links to give your customers another opportunity to buy their favorite products.
8. Improves Customer Support
Every brand needs to ensure a smooth customer experience, from the first interaction to repeat purchases. According to Hubspot Sales Enablement Report, 95% of buyers pick a seller that provides the right content to make the buying process easier.
A smart way to eliminate any friction in the buyer’s journey is to use videos with instructions on how your consumers can use your product. This can speed up the decision-making process by showing potential customers how your product works or how to troubleshoot, should they encounter a problem.
Samsung, for example, created an instructional video about their Freestyle Projector. The video guides consumers step-by-step to help them understand how it works.
Make It Interactive With COTU: Besides adding a clickable link to lead viewers to the product page, you can also add links to pages explaining certain features or policy pages for delivery, quality control, return/refund, etc. Adding FAQs in the expandable cards can also save your customers time and inconvenience.
Best Practices
- Focus on Problem-Solving. An instructional video should focus on giving clear instructions in order to answer any potential questions before the viewers have a chance to ask them. Make sure the instructions are clear, actionable, and easy to understand.
- Decide Where To Place Your Video. Adding instructional videos to the wrong page on your website can make it less effective. Place it on the product page(s) and include it in your promotional activities for the target customers at the consideration and conversion stages of the buyer’s journey.
- Be Creative and Interesting. Who said instructional videos couldn’t be creative? You can stand out with your tone of voice, choice of visuals, or the use of animated characters to answer the most frequent questions. You can also use animated graphics to demonstrate complex processes in a simple way.
9. Enables Soft Selling
The best way to make customers remember you and come back to you repeatedly is to create relatable and helpful content. Videos that generate awareness about the problems solved by a product or a brand (without trying to sell) are beneficial for soft selling without coming off as pushy or salesy.
Focus on providing viable solutions to your potential customers’ problems and weave in your products or services naturally where it makes sense.
B&Q created a step-by-step video on how to lay a patio, walking their customers through the entire process. In the 9-minute video, you get a complete how-to along with expert tips from the brand. During the video, there is also a subtle promotion of B&Q’s products in a way that doesn’t disrupt the viewing experience.
Make It Interactive With COTU: You can conveniently turn any combination of products, tools, or materials shown in videos into clickable sets that allow customers to buy all the recommended items they need in one go.
Best Practices:
- Don’t Push for Sales. No one likes to be sold to, and customers appreciate when brands genuinely try to help them achieve what they want. Make sure not to go overboard with promotion, as it will defeat the purpose of the video.
- Focus on Value Instead of Video Length. Not all successful videos are short. As with B&Q’s video, a 9-minute video can still be engaging, provided that you’re really giving the viewers value and the content you promised them.
- Avoid Distractions. Conversion can follow quickly after a viewer has watched your video. Instead of adding expandable cards to sell related products, try using them to give the viewers more information on the subject. You can always add a final end screen, featuring all the shoppable products, to further facilitate sales.
10. Saves Customers Time
Videos can package a lot of information in a short time and convey it to potential customers in an engaging way. Shoppable videos are perhaps the most efficient at saving customers’ time and helping them pass through the sales funnel quickly.
In this rock climbing clip, the gear featured in the video is showcased conveniently through expandable cards. Viewers can click on the cards to learn more about the products, and if they like them, they can click on the link to reach the product page. It takes only a few clicks from product discovery to conversion with shoppable videos.
Best Practices:
- A/B Test the Video Length. Test the videos to find the ideal length—the one that yields your audience’s highest engagement and click-through rates. COTU uses clicks on the expandable cards to measure engagement levels, and you can easily compare them on COTU’s analytics dashboard.
- Every Second Matters. Irrespective of the video length, your content must be helpful and to the point. Only then can it help the viewers make up their minds quickly.
11. Builds Trust With Reviews and Testimonial Videos
How many times have you searched for product reviews before making a purchase? The best way to win customers is to share what others think about your product.
That’s right—social proof matters a lot.
Customer reviews and testimonials make it easier for your audience to trust your brand. In fact, 90% of consumers report that reviews, whether positive or negative, influence their buying decisions.
Beardbrand used influencer marketing and created a video where a TikToker gets a haircut using their products. The product placement is seamless, and the narrative around the transformation engages viewers to watch the video until the end.
Make It Interactive With COTU: Product overlays could make this video more successful for the brand to help facilitate conversions without disrupting the viewing experience.
Best Practices:
- Don’t Let the Reviews Seem Too Perfect. Nobody likes a review that feels too good to be true. Review videos can have a script, but still, it should be truthful, and its authenticity shouldn’t get lost.
- Let Influencers Take the Reins. Review videos cannot be cookie-cutter, and influencers resonate with their fans because of their personality. So, let the influencers decide how to present your products to their followers.
- Share Candid Customer Testimonials. Let your potential customers know what buyers think about your products truthfully. Let them be themselves when they answer your questions or share their opinion. Your customers are not actors; people can sense fake reviews from a mile away.
12. Increases Conversion Rates
Shoppable videos are the best for sales as they provide crucial product information right in the video and then take interested viewers directly to the product pages in a few clicks. You can also facilitate quick conversions by linking to landing pages, such as sign-up pages for events or webinars.
Consumers are plagued with choice overload and a dwindling attention span. They want to be able to complete purchases faster. Videos have a 4.8x higher conversion rate, whereas interactive videos can increase the conversion rate by 25%. That’s because shoppable videos reduce the time it takes to turn a visitor into a customer.
In this demo, visitors can choose from many different sets of sporting equipment depending on their preferences. At the end of the video, the product carousel provides another opportunity for viewers to click through to product pages.
Best Practices:
- Focus on the Outcome. When creating content for conversion, keep the result in mind. Create an experience that facilitates sales and sign-ups with clear and descriptive CTAs.
- Promote Multiple Products. You don’t need to promote one product at a time. Give your customers the option to choose what they like the most from a set of items.
- Upsell With Product Sets. People often like a product but have no idea how to complete the look or improve the performance of the product they initially chose. With shoppable cards, you should create a grouped set for such cases to effectively recommend and upsell complementary products.
13. Boosts Consumer Confidence
You can only make sales when consumers feel confident in your product’s value. Video content is perfect for showing viewers how your product can make a difference in your ideal customers’ lives.
Videos can help customers realize why they should use a product by showing them the benefits instead of telling them. You can weave an engaging story around your product with a message that speaks directly to the customers’ needs.
Dove promoted their Intense Repair shampoo with a video that addresses everyday hair struggles many women face. The video features this product’s ideal target customers, i.e., busy women worried about hair damage as they go about their lives. That makes this video campaign relatable and increases the consumers’ confidence in this product.
Make It Interactive With COTU: Expandable cards can provide interested people with more information about hair damage and its causes. Clickable links can lead to product pages and/or pages with more information about the science behind the product.
Best Practices:
- Focus on the Message. The best way to make your customers feel confident in your product is to focus on the message. Don’t make it all about the product; focus on the problems it can solve.
- Let Others Talk About Your Product. Get your customers or industry influencers to talk about your product. Don’t aim for perfection; give the audience an authentic experience.
14. Helps Customers Discover New Products
The creative use of videos can help consumers discover new products without feeling like they are watching an ad. The most successful shoppable videos make it easier for consumers to find what they want without making a lot of effort.
Zimmermann, for example, created a high-quality video that features various products without disrupting the viewing experience. Consumers can explore different looks and click on the product they like without having to visit multiple product pages.
Make It Interactive With COTU: During customer research, COTU found that most people prefer product cards instead of hotspots, the latter of which is difficult to follow around and click, which disrupts the viewing experience. Instead, you can show the product details in expandable product cards, which provide for a reliable and seamless shopping experience in a video. This kind of video is also ideal for displaying grouped products so viewers can buy a complete look or see complimentary items.
Best Practices:
- Make the Products Part of the Story. Find a balance between storytelling and selling. Don’t make it too obvious that you want to drive sales, so make products a part of the narrative.
- Facilitate Selling. Make it easy for customers to complete a purchase by providing all the necessary details. For example, you can include the price, product descriptions, or even the estimated delivery time to speed up the sale.
15. Establishes Brand Positioning
Videos help companies establish brand positioning by communicating their message to their customers loud and clear. Branding can help customers remember you and your products. That’s why it’s important to consistently include branding elements in videos to create a memorable visual identity.
Coca-Cola, for example, is an expert in product positioning, which is part of why it has dominated the market for over 125 years. The brand aligns with the feelings of happiness, joy, friendships, and sharing, which are prominent in its marketing videos. The consumers feel connected with the brand and actively participate in its campaigns to share their happy experiences with the world.
Make It Interactive With COTU: Use expandable cards to include heartfelt notes or quotes from consumers in the video. You can also use clickable links to landing pages where viewers can learn more about how you’re making a difference in the world.
Best Practices:
- Be Consistent With Brand Positioning. It’s crucial to build your brand identity along with your content. It requires continued effort and perseverance to establish consistent brand positioning.
- Use Your Branding To Build Credibility. Help customers associate emotions with your brand. Even in the subtly promotional videos, your branding can still exist in the background with your use of branded colors or overlays when your product shows up on the screen.
If you’re ready to improve the online shopping experience for your customers, try COTU to create interactive videos for your brand. Schedule a demo today and explore new ways to engage your customers.