Shoppable videos are entirely changing how consumers make their online purchases, providing incredible opportunities for you to boost your ecommerce sales. These interactive videos allow customers to click on products directly in the video to either get more details or add them to their cart.
This significantly simplifies the customers’ buying journey.
A simple buyer’s journey means your customers are more likely to convert since there is less friction between the awareness and decision-making phases. Your customers’ attention span is getting shorter and shorter by the minute, and they are looking for simpler, more fulfilling experiences.
That’s exactly what they’re getting with shoppable videos.
Research shows that interactive ecommerce videos are up to 10X more effective at generating click-throughs. They produce 66% more engagement and have 44% longer viewing times than other content.
Table of Contents
What Is Shoppable Video
Why Your Brand Should Be Creating Shoppable Videos Now
Shoppable Video Is The Future Of Ecommerce
How Does A Shoppable Video Work?
Where Can You Publish Your Shoppable Videos
How To Create Shoppable Videos Using Cotu’s 4 Simple Steps
Tips To Create The Best Shoppable Videos For Conversion
4 Amazing Shoppable Video Examples That Made A Big Impact
What is Shoppable Video
A shoppable video is a video that viewers can interact with without interrupting their viewing experience. Customers can click on products displayed in the video to learn more about them or add them to their shopping carts.
Why Your Brand Should Be Creating Shoppable Videos Now
Shoppable videos can go a long way in boosting your ecommerce sales. The benefits are endless, from higher engagements to more conversions and brand loyalty. Here are a few reasons you should be creating shoppable videos:
Boosts Customer Loyalty
Customer retention is highly profitable for ecommerce businesses. It’s much cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to find a new one. A loyal customer will also likely spend more money with your business and recommend you to others.
Studies show that improving customer retention by just 5% could increase profits by more than 90%. This makes sense since you’re spending less on winning new customers, your existing customers are buying more often, and they’re also bringing in new business.
Higher Conversion Rates
One of the main benefits of a shoppable video is its ability to simplify customers’ buying journey. Research shows that a complex checkout process is one of the main reasons shoppers abandon their carts.
With a typical video, customers are forced to pause the video and search for the products they like in order to make a purchase. This extra step makes the buying journey complex. It can distract them or frustrate them enough to abandon the purchase.
In shoppable videos, viewers don’t have to look for the featured products elsewhere because they already pop up at a side of the video. From there, it only takes one or two clicks for the watchers to get the products into their shopping carts. Also, with CTAs scattered throughout the video, viewers have more opportunities to click through.
Better Performance Insights
Understanding your customers’ behavior is key to providing them with the most satisfying shopping experience. With shoppable videos, you can track customer clicks, the length of time a customer spends on each product overlay, and which parts of a video interest viewers the most, among other things.
You can then use this information to tailor your customer experience, as well as to determine which products you should invest in more.
The COTU team interviewed potential clients, and they were excited about the shoppable video concept: “it’s extremely valuable to be able to see which products were clicked on more. I can determine which ones are ‘bestsellers’ or ‘bottlenecks’ and pivot my strategy quickly.”
Higher Engagement
Shoppable videos do an amazing job at holding customers’ interest and piquing their curiosity. The interactive nature of these videos encourages customers to engage more with the video, increasing the time they spend on your page. The longer they stay on your website, the more likely they will spend money with you.
If visitors are not connecting well with the content on your website, then it’s next to impossible to push them along the sales funnel.
Shoppable videos “increase conversion rates significantly, because you’re giving the viewers more opportunity to engage with the product,” explains Annie Hinners, Marketing Director, Interactive Video Expert.
Shoppable Video Is the Future of Ecommerce
The need for personalized experiences and instant gratification are some of the defining characteristics of the tech-reliant generations. Even the Alphas (2010 – 2024), who are still very young, are used to having all the information at their fingertips. They also significantly influence (81%) the purchasing decisions of their millennial parents.
Regular video marketing might be here for the long haul, but it’s not enough to motivate the tech-savvy and impatient generations to open their wallets. Content creators will have to kick things up a notch to really catch their attention.
And the shoppable video does it neatly!
The seamless viewing experience, with all the crucial information a click away, fulfills the desire for instant gratification of the current and next generations. And, not to forget the powerful analytics and performance insights companies can get from these shoppable videos.
Businesses can use this data to hyper-personalize the shopping experience for their customers and lead them to the products they are most likely to buy. It’s crucial because 72% of consumers say they only respond to personalized messaging.
According to Hinners, “the analytics behind shoppable videos allows the brand to take a good look at what viewers are engaging with, so they can invest better into the products people like. Brands can see common threads and use them to give watchers what they want.”
With 25% higher conversion rates and 14% more sales, it’s safe to say that shoppable videos are the future of ecommerce.
Shoppertainment: Making Shopping Even More Entertaining
Shopping is already a fun activity for many people, but shoppable videos take it a notch higher; they make shopping even more entertaining for customers. Traditionally, video ads and commercials have succeeded in getting consumers’ attention because they are interesting. Successful ads use the power of storytelling to hook their customers and leave their impression in the consumers’ minds.
Shoppable videos use the same principle, but they also fill the gap between persuasion and purchase. Video ads engage and persuade, but many leads get lost when they have to leave the video in search of the products.
As a COTU user shared, “I’ll see an ad for something, and I’ll want it. But by the time I’m Googling, if it’s hard to find, I give up. With shoppable video, knowing that it’s one-click, I love this concept, I love this idea.”
Shoppable videos keep entertaining consumers while they shop on the side through various product links right in the video. Some companies go as far as making mini-movies with their shoppable videos, while others simply film people having fun with their products.
According to Hinners, “Shoppable video allows customers to “linger longer” and really retain more information from the videos. So, the watchers are going to remember that product so much more because they’re interacting with that product.”
How Does A Shoppable Video Work?
Shoppable videos are just like regular videos but with product overlays. You need software like COTU to add these product overlays to your videos. Depending on the software, product overlays can be in the form of product popups, like with COTU, or clickable hotspots various software use.
Viewers have the option to click on the products in the video for more details or to add the products to their shopping carts—all without ever leaving the video. Since the product overlays align with the scene in the video or the featured products, people feel like they’re interacting with the videos.
Many people confuse shoppable videos with live shopping.
Shoppable Videos Are Different From Live Shopping
Shoppable video and live shopping are similar in that both allow viewers to buy products while watching the video. However, in a live stream, the sale and purchase occur in real-time. Watchers can also ask the presenter questions about the products and get the answers right there. The offers are usually valid only while the video is being broadcasted.
On the contrary, shoppable video is pre-recorded and can be professionally edited to match your brand’s guidelines. Watchers can click on products and buy them anytime, regardless of when the video was made.
Where Can You Publish Shoppable Videos
From personal websites to social media, ads, and more, there are many places you can choose to share your shoppable video with your audience. However, we know that shoppable videos are different from regular videos. The product popups in the shoppable videos are not a part of the actual footage but are overlaid. That’s why you can’t publish them just anywhere.
Let’s explore some platforms that have shoppable video capabilities:
Your Website
One of the first places you may think to post your shoppable video is your ecommerce website, and you’re exactly right. COTU provides an embedded link that you can use to easily embed your shoppable video on your product page, landing pages, campaign pages, or in your blogs.
Emails
Emails and videos are two of the most effective marketing strategies available. Research shows that emails with embedded videos see 300% more click-throughs. Since videos cannot be added directly to emails, you’ll need to use a clickable thumbnail image with your shoppable video as a hyperlink.
Influencer Marketing Platforms
Influencer marketing platforms like LTK, Impact, Bazaarvoice, and others are also great places to publish your shoppable videos and get exposure to your products. LTK, for example, brings 8 million monthly shoppers to their website.
Video Hosting Platforms
TikTok is a major video hosting platform, and with over 1 billion monthly visitors spending more than 45 minutes on the app daily, it’s a great way to spread the word about your products. You can use the API of the software you used to create your shoppable video to publish your video on TikTok, as well as other similar platforms.
There are many more shoppable video companies for you to choose from to get the word out about your own video. It’s just a matter of picking the one that’s most suitable for your own business.
How to Create Shoppable Video Using COTU’s 4 Simple Steps
COTU simplifies the shoppable video creation process, making creating and adding product overlays to your video easy. Here are the steps to do it:
Create Your Campaign
This is where you upload your video footage and decide on your campaign audience, budget, and goals. Simply log in to the COTU platform, select ‘new campaign,’ and add relevant campaign details.
Make sure the video you choose is already edited for audio, video, and any special effects you’re interested in. Hinners explains that they want the “audio completely packaged up and ready to go once it gets uploaded to COTU because COTU would be like the last step of making it interactive.”
Create Your Product Overlays
This is where you start creating your product overlays and adding links to your video. COTU allows you to add as many products as you need to feature in a video. In this step, you can input product names, URLs, photos, and their overview.
Add Your Products To The Timeline
COTU allows you to overlay products on the video simply by dragging and dropping them on the video timeline. You can select the order in which they appear in the video. For each segment, you can use multiple products to appear on the screen simultaneously. Similarly, you can drag them along the timeline and pull the edges to increase their display duration.
In COTU, products appear at the top right corner because “we did a lot of testing on this, and the majority vote was that most people preferred the product to appear in the top right or top left corner, rather than being on the product itself,” explained Hinners.
Save And Publish Your Campaign
Once you’re done creating your video, it’s time to go live. Simply hit the Publish button in the COTU platform to achieve this. Click on Share, and you’ll get three options in which you can publish your content, including a unique COTU link, QR code, and embed code.
Step-By-Step Tutorial on How to Create Shoppable Video With COTU
Tips to Create Shoppable Videos That Sell
Ultimately, your goal for making shoppable videos, as with anything else, is to improve sales. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when making a shoppable video that can sell your stuff like crazy.
- Make Your CTAs Clear
Clear, simple CTAs strategically placed throughout the video can help to increase conversion rates.
- Make Sure Links Are Non-Intrusive
Consider the placement of your product links after watchers click on them. Do they pop out and cover the entire page? Users might find that somewhat disruptive.
Hinners observed, “many videos have this functionality, where if you click on something, it just completely takes over the screen. This causes, in my opinion, some friction, because you want to continue watching the video, but then you have to click out again. There are just too many clicks.”
- Let Product Shots Run Longer
This gives the viewer enough time to interact with the product. For best results, you can let product shots run for 3 seconds.
- Include A Shoppable Link In The First Few Shots
It grabs the watchers’ attention from the beginning and encourages them to keep interacting with the video as it progresses.
- Let The Audience Know The Video Is Interactive
Since shoppable videos are still fairly new, it’s crucial to let viewers know that the video is interactive at the beginning to capture their attention before they lose interest.
Hinners says, “Shoppable video is that innovation that’s up and coming. There’s interactive content everywhere. There are quizzes; there are polls, calculators… I think shoppable video is just that extra piece of the puzzle we’re fulfilling here.”
Amazing Shoppable Video Examples That Made a Big Impact
Now that you know how to make shoppable videos and how to use them let us inspire you with some outstanding shoppable video examples. We’ve selected these examples to highlight here since they gathered immense fame and earned quite some revenue for their companies.
Notice how these videos stay in line with their brand voice, and the content appeals to the sensibilities of their target audiences without fail.
Ted Baker
Ted Baker used a simple yet high-quality video to showcase its winter collection. The hotspots in this video are easy to follow, and each frame focuses on only a few products at a time. This video helped them raise over £70,000.
Zara
Zara did a fantastic job creating a fun short movie by using the power of storytelling to market its products. This video got a 257% interaction rate, with each viewer watching the video a little over three times. You can clearly identify the hotspots in the videos that lead to detailed information about the product with the option to buy it instantly.
Ikea
This is a laid-back, playful commerce video by Ikea. The video simply featured people having fun using regular household items. This video saw a 72% interaction rate and an average watch time of 30 seconds.
Missoni
Missoni used their shoppable video to showcase their Adidas collection in a fun way. No hotspots were used. Readers can simply click on the look they’re interested in to interact with them. Although the video is fast-paced, it’s still easy to click on the models. This video resulted in a 38% engagement and a 15% click-through rate.
Are you ready to take the plunge and create your own shoppable videos? Sign up for a demo with COTU today.