How video content improves customer engagement and helps increase ecommerce sales

Most of the leading online stores use video content. Users are more likely to remember a brand when they go through an immersive experience on a website but not only. The benefits of displaying videos on ecommerce sites are numerous:

• Conversion rate increase. 81% of marketers say video has helped them directly increase sales – Source: Wyzowl.
• SEO improvement. The Google’s ranking algorithm loves video. Sites with good quality video content get higher positions and more visitors mostly because people are staying longer on your pages telling Google your site is to be trusted – Source : BigCommerce (Igor Lebovic’s quote). Moreover video content is 50x more likely to drive organic traffic than plain text – Source: Omnicore.
• Reduction of product returns and support queries. A clear visual exposure of the product helps the customers make the right choice.
• Better exposure and a more recognizable brand. The trend these days seems to be more on the lifestyle or emotion behind the brands, rather than just focusing on the products they are selling. Letting your audience know what the brand is passionate about can bring them in even closer and create that brand loyalty you need – Source : BigCommerce (Chris Van Dusen’s quote).

Types of videos in ecommerce and where to display them on your website

There are divided into 3 large categories:

1. Product understanding

   Product videos
   They include all those videos on retailers' websites that show the product from different angles and try to replace the experience of actually seeing the product in person. Now these formats are becoming more diverse in their mechanics and are trying to mimic the usual engaging formats, like the Stories.

   This kind of content is a great addition to your product promotional pages, because it will visualize every aspect of the product and encourage you to make a purchase. Almost 80% of people state that product videos give them more confidence when purchasing a product – Source: Wyzowl

   Video tutorials
   Demo videos that are educational and entertaining will help customers learn how to use the product.

2. Immersive experience & brand identity

   Banner videos
   Often used on the websites’ hompage, banner videos better engage your users and let them discover your brand identity in a couple of seconds. Usually played without the sound – forbidden by Google if the users didn’t have any interaction with the page yet – they are tackling the bounce rate (if well displayed though). Just putting a video on your landing page can reduce the bounce rate by an average 34% – Source: Brafton

   Story-telling videos
   You can use videos to tell your story or the story of a product. Such videos resonate with viewers. Today's customers are increasingly paying attention to where products come from, how they are made, and what materials they are made of. Why not talk about it in a video? The same goes for telling the story of the brand. Identify what drives your brand, what the key figures are, what you do and why. People are more willing to buy from companies that have clear missions with social and environmental components.

3. Reassurance

   Clients’ Reviews
   It's one thing to say how great you are. But it's better to showcase videos of real customers, confirming it. People find video testimonials more reliable than written testimonials, so including them can be a powerful tool to help you increase conversions and boost sales.

How to leverage video content for your ecommerce?

The trend of using video in ecommerce has been taking shape for the past five years, and gained additional momentum with the pandemic. People locked at home due to quarantine switched to online shopping and product videos that helped them get more emotion from purchases and get to know the product better.

Why videos work so well

• Visibility. The most obvious argument is that videos are able to showcase the products better than text descriptions or photos. At the British online clothing store Asos, many products are accompanied not only by a photo, but also by a short video of the model going somewhere - so you can see the thing in motion.
• There's more trust. While images are almost always photoshopped, videos are still perceived as something realistic.
• Engagement. Audiences tend to "go with the flow", and videos are easy to consume on website like it tends to be on social media platforms.

How to use video to boost ecommerce sales

1. Showcase your product in movement.
   High-quality visuals are the strict minimum on your product page but won’t be enough to beat the competition. Let your users visualize them using or wearing your product. This will bring them a step closer to a real experience in-store.
2. Don’t focus on social networks only.
   The era of selling on social networks is gradually disappearing, too much competition is forming there. On Instagram, a user sees one company's ad after another - the attention is blurred, and the distance between viewing and buying increases. On YouTube, a competitors' ads might be shown right after your company's video.
3. Emphasize a variety of content.
   User-generated videos might be more efficient than professional shootings. At the very least, your videos should convey all the relevant information on your product in a visual way. Ideally, they should also stir the right emotions.

Why retailers and ecommerce platforms don’t display more videos online?

Well the answer is simple. It's a technical barrier. Videos are much more difficult to integrate on a web page than images.

The equivalent of srcset does not exist for videos so you can't put several formats at the disposal of an internet user. You can only broadcast one unique format to all your internet users or you’ll need JS to get around the problem...

When a video is not properly managed, it can lead to disastrous site performance. The user experience gets degraded as they have to wait for the content to load, which is clearly the opposite of the desired result.

Introducing TwicPics Video

Use cases

Remember when we described the different types of video you could use on your website? Well, TwicPics is specialized in optimization of video banners and product videos. These videos are lasting no more than to 30 seconds, they are autoplayed and muted and are starting as soon as a user is landing on your page.

Optimizing videos with TwicPics: embedded videos on the web and no more player

Embedded videos are directly integrated in the source code of your website: forget about clumsy players such as Youtube/Vimeo and their heavy tracking. We listed 6 main reasons why you should consider using TwicPics solution to deliver your video assets. Here they are:

1. Full control over your videos
   With TwicPics, you keep control of your videos, whether it's for webcasting or posting on your site. Your videos stay with you, on your storage, and never become our property.
2. Optimization of your page weight
   Forget about the JavaScript files needed to load players that delay the display of your videos. With TwicPics, simply embed your videos via the HTML <video> tag.
3. Adaptation to the users’ context
   Unlike Youtube, which does not allow you to adapt your videos to the users’ screens, TwicPics automatically optimizes your videos according to their screens DPR (Retina). Moreover the videos will be cropped, resized, formatted, and compressed according to the browser, and the dimensions and aspect ratio under which you want to display them (CSS).
4. Traffic, SEO and user engagement
   As for as your website ranking, you keep the credit of your video contents: your users stay on your pages and do not risk to be redirected towards other platforms.
5. Protect your brand image
   Compared with platforms such as Vimeo and Youtube, TwicPics does not require a player to load your videos, and our logo will never be imposed or placed on them. We promote your brand, not ours.
6. No ads and no cookies
   Say no to advertising your competitors’ products and displaying them to your users after they finish watching your video. With TwicPics, ensure an optimal user experience without ads, without cookies, and without degrading your company's brand image.

Ask for a demo with our team.