In the age of social media and e-commerce, video content continues to play a crucial role in modern marketing strategies. It has helped brick-and-mortar and online stores stand out, promote their products, and engage with potential customers better.
Video content has evolved so much today that it offers various integrations to help brands deliver a more seamless customer experience. One of these innovations comes in the form of shoppable videos.
A shoppable video is interactive content that provides a new shopping experience to online users. It's an innovative video marketing technique that benefits brands in many ways.
Keep reading below to learn more about shoppable videos. This guide will help you with some of the best practices and tricks when creating them.
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Understanding Shoppable Videos
Shoppable videos are a form of interactive content that enables viewers to purchase or shop for products directly from the video itself. These marketing videos usually contain clickable links or buttons to allow viewers to access a landing page — from product catalog to checkout.
The best part about this video content is that it enables online shoppers to purchase any item without leaving the platform. That means they can continue watching the content without pausing or stopping to visit another page. This makes the viewing and shopping experience more engaging, unlike traditional videos, where viewers have to scour descriptions to look for links.
Benefits of Shoppable Videos
Providing a seamless shopping experience is only the tip of the shoppable video iceberg. The following are some known benefits of utilizing these interactive marketing videos.
Increase customer engagement
Generally, utilizing video marketing is an effective way to boost customer engagement. People are becoming more visual in the age of social media. Shoppable videos help elevate their experience by incorporating interactive hotspots or touchpoints within the content.
Shoppable videos enable online users to choose and purchase products directly from the content without interrupting their viewing. This seamless integration creates a natural and convenient way for customers to interact with their desired brand. Through shoppable videos, brands can create a more meaningful experience for viewers, boosting engagement rates and driving more sales.
Simplify the customer journey
Nothing drives online shoppers away more than a lengthy buying process. Online shopping used to involve multiple steps. These include browsing product pages, adding items to an online cart, and completing checkout. Unfortunately, this resulted in a tedious user experience and abandoned carts.
With shoppable videos, brands can simplify the customer journey. Shoppers can now learn more about their desired products, add them to carts, and proceed to checkout, all while watching a video. In doing so, brands can eliminate various steps in the buying process, creating a user-friendly customer experience that prevents lost sales.
Strengthen brand loyalty
Shoppable videos also play a vital role in improving brand loyalty. Creating interactive content demonstrating the target audience's desired products helps brands build a stronger connection with them. Viewers who feel connected to a brand will likely become loyal customers, returning for future purchases.
Moreover, offering seamless experiences, like those provided by shoppable videos, will make customers feel valued. This can also help improve brand loyalty and boost customer retention rates.
Vital Steps for Creating Shoppable Videos
Careful planning and execution are vital for creating shoppable videos. It’s best not to produce them on a whim, so follow the steps below to ensure the highest content quality.
Pre-production
Begin the process by identifying your goals and target audience. Storytelling is vital in shoppable videos. So determining such factors is crucial to help you create a relevant story that captivates your viewers and highlights specific products.
Once you've identified your objectives and target audience, select the most visually appealing product to feature on your shoppable videos. It could be a new product line or a best-selling item as long as it's easy to demonstrate on video and fits the overall goal.
Next, finalize the video format you aim to do. That means selecting whether they’re tutorials, demonstrations, or live videos. Again, it must fit with your campaign objective.
Then your team must create a script for the shoppable video. This is vital for dialogue and outlining key directions that production must follow. It's also where you include all the essential camera shots, like close-ups or full shots, to display the product better.
After that, it's time to plan the shoot. These include selecting a location that complements the theme and acquiring the proper equipment to capture or meet the desired look. Most of the time, e-commerce store owners hire talent to exhibit the product better and to facilitate an interactive shoppable video.
Production
Once you're done planning, it's time to film your shoppable video. While shooting, always follow your script and shot list to ensure you fully demonstrate your featured products. Adhering to the script is especially crucial if you live-stream your shoppable video. If you derail from it, you could encounter various issues while filming.
If you're filming a live shoppable video, include all the interactive elements, like clickable links and an enticing call-to-action (CTA). These features are vital to make your marketing campaigns more effective. Fortunately, various apps can help you integrate such components.
Meanwhile, you can experiment with different shots outside your list if you're not filming a live video. Doing this will help you discover more angles that better showcase your products.
Moreover, before starting filming, ensure that all your equipment works properly. See if your cameras have the proper settings. If you're doing a voiceover narration, test if your voice recorder captures clean and clear audio.
Post-production
After filming your shoppable video, the next step is to edit it. Here, you'll ensure your finished content looks polished and professional by selecting the best clips and stitching them together.
This is where you'll also add seamless transitions and background music that fits the content's tone. If you're using a voiceover narration, remove all the unnecessary noise and ensure that the music doesn't overpower the audio.
Additionally, this part is where you'll add the interactive elements to make it a shoppable experience. These include clickable links and CTAs. You can also add product images and descriptions to make your videos more informative and enticing.
Lastly, double-check to see if it follows your script before publishing either video ads or informative guides. Ensure that it adheres to your goals and appeals to your audience.
Helpful Tips While Creating Shoppable Videos
Now that you know the basic steps in creating your shoppable video, it's time to elevate it by doing the following practices.
Keep it short
In today's fast-paced digital landscape, people's attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. Online users want to consume content and gather information quickly. With shorter shoppable videos, brands can capture their target audience's attention and urge them to purchase.
Ideally, you want to keep your shoppable videos in under one minute. Going longer might make your viewers lose interest or get distracted before they even click through. Removing all the unnecessary dialogue and scenes enables you to get straight to the point and highlight all the benefits your featured products have.
In doing so, you make your content more exciting and engaging at the same time, potentially urging the target audience to complete a purchase.
Meanwhile, you can go beyond this one-minute rule to launch a live shopping video. With live videos, you want to interact with your viewers as much as possible and urge them to shop. You can do this by engaging with them through the live chat.
Use high-quality materials
Nothing drives online viewers away from videos more than poor quality. Poor quality could mean bad lighting, incompetent cutting, and blurry final output. These factors could frustrate online viewers and prompt them to close your shoppable video before you can showcase your product.
An excellent way to entice your target audience is by utilizing high-quality materials when creating your video content. If you publish a pre-recorded shoppable video, select the best footage that perfectly captures your featured product. Your final output must be at least 1080 full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) or the industry standard for quality videos.
On the other hand, full HD will only work if your selected footage is in focus, meaning you must ensure your camera has the correct setting before shooting to avoid this issue. Similarly, you must also choose the best images to complement your products. Plus, your voiceover narration must be clear.
Meanwhile, live shoppable videos are riskier than pre-recorded videos. With live streaming, you must ensure the same quality throughout the video. Live videos usually rely on a strong internet connection. Before starting the stream, ensure an uninterrupted and fast internet connection. Test your equipment hours or days before the stream to guarantee high-quality output.
Highlight the benefits
Generally, brands utilize shoppable videos to showcase their best products. Give your viewers a reason to watch and purchase your featured items. To do so, you must highlight their key benefits.
By demonstrating your product's benefits, you can show your customers how your products will solve a problem or meet a need they have. Doing so helps them understand your product's value, making your shoppable video content more appealing.
Personalize your videos
Online users respond well to personalized experiences. You can do this by customizing your shoppable videos for your target audience.
The best way to approach this is by segmenting your audience by a specific factor and creating campaigns that resonate with each group. This will help you create shoppable video campaigns that are more relatable.
Another way to personalize your videos is by adding a human element — including a person in your content will make it easier for the target audience to trust you.
That's why most brands enlist the help of influencers to help create more engaging shoppable videos. They are especially effective in live videos as they can make the stream more entertaining and interactive.
Utilize customer feedback
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content form created and shared by users about a product or service, often as a way to give feedback to them. Usually, UGCs are published as social media posts, images, blogs, and videos.
You can utilize your brand's product reviews to make your shoppable videos more effective. Add snippets of your brand's user-generated videos, especially those with positive feedback about the featured product. These materials will help provide authenticity and elevate your product's credibility.
There are also tools you can use to convert your customer’s video UGC into shoppable content.
Shoppable Video Platforms to Try
Now that you know all the vital practices for creating shoppable videos, it's time to learn about the best platforms you can use.
With billions of users worldwide, Instagram is one of the top choices for brands to successfully convert their target audience with shoppable videos. Today, the app allows users to shop for products through Instagram videos and posts on the feed.
Unfortunately, this feature is only available for approved businesses, and brands can only feature a maximum of five products per video. Still, Instagram is an excellent choice by being one of the largest social media platforms that cater to a heavily visual audience.
Bambuser
Bambuser is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider that offers a live video shopping experience for brands. Although this app mainly focuses on live streaming, they have an option for brands to publish pre-recorded videos too.
The best part is that Bambuser offers integration to any e-commerce platform. It also provides in-stream shopping features and allows users to edit and download their shoppable videos for reuse.
Amazon Live
Created by the e-commerce giant Amazon Live is a platform that allows brands to produce shoppable videos for free by those registered in the Amazon Brand Registry.
This app enables users to interact with viewers with a real-time chat feature. Plus, it allows brands to sponsor live streams produced by influencers through the app.
Clicktivated
Clicktivated is one of the best options for creating an immersive and interactive experience for online shoppers. This platform is excellent for seamlessly connecting the featured products to users, allowing them to buy items with a click while watching the shoppable video. Ultimately, it gives users complete control over which products they want to explore. Plus, it allows brands to feature as many items as they want.
Moreover, Clicktivated is one of the more secure options in the market. With its IP-protection feature, brands can publish their shoppable videos with ease.
Livescale
Livescale is an excellent option for brands focusing on live selling. It provides them with the best in-video purchasing and integrated checkout features. That means viewers can stream and shop seamlessly through this platform.
The best part is that Livescale allows brands to add logos to the video, creating a quality branded live stream.
Pro Tip: Shoppable videos are still new to some online users. It's best to let them know at the start of the video that they can interact with it. You can add a disclaimer text or use a voiceover to inform them.
Take Advantage of a More Advanced E-Commerce Industry
Shoppable videos have become an increasingly vital tool for businesses looking for a more engaging way to drive sales. Creating these interactive videos help brands showcase their products differently while providing a seamless shopping experience to customers.
When producing these videos, there are various elements that brands must include to make their campaigns effective. Among these elements are user-generated content (UGC). Incorporating UGCs, like videos, will help you build your product's credibility and create a sense of authenticity in your shoppable content.
Take advantage of every user-generated content related to your brand. Check out Archive for some of the best solutions that will help you maximize your UGCs.
Boost your shoppable videos with your target audience's user-generated content. With Archive, you won't have to miss out on the best ones that can help elevate your brand's credibility. Contact us today!
FAQs on Boosting Sales With Shoppable Videos
Will shoppable videos work on businesses in a B2B setup?
Shoppable videos can benefit B2B companies the same way they do B2C. Using the same interactive content can help attract potential partners. The only difference would be in the approach, particularly how the script is written and the type of products featured.
Besides Instagram, what are the best social media platforms for shoppable videos?
Besides Instagram, brands can also utilize TikTok and YouTube to publish shoppable videos. Both platforms now offer shoppable video features, including shoppable links, CTAs, and e-commerce platform integrations.
What are some of the best features of a shoppable video platform?
Some of the best features that most shoppable video platforms offer include live selling, mobile optimization or app, marketing automation, analytics, chatbots, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory management. These are among the features you must look for when choosing a platform.
