But it’s not easy. Even though e-commerce is more prominent than ever – with e-commerce revenues projected to reach US$3.64tn in 2023 and showing an annual growth rate of 11.17% – it comes with an inherent challenge that can cause customers who are otherwise ready to purchase not to convert.
The issue? It’s impossible to touch, feel, or try products through a screen.
This contributes to average cart abandonment across industries sitting at more than 70%. However, the right use of video can be a great solution to this problem, with 78% of video marketers saying video has directly helped increase sales.
Video has a key role to play in optimizing for conversion. Here’s how you can get the most out of it.
By 2025, organizations offering [a] unified commerce experience by frictionlessly moving customers through [purchase] journeys will see at least a 20% uplift in total revenue.
SOURCE: GARTNER, Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce.
1.
Moving into the digital conversion stage, delivering video content to customers, such as detailed product demonstrations or live Q&A sessions to address and eliminate customers' remaining worries is a great approach. This type of content allows you to reassure your viewers that they are making a sound and informed decision by purchasing from your brand.
As your customers are just about ready to take the final action and convert, make it easy for them to do so by adding interactive elements that give you a competitive edge. 71% of consumers worldwide said videos with interactive features like “buy now” links are essential for shopping online.
Maximize confidence
After building trust throughout the customer journey so far, moving to the digital conversion stage means you want to focus on maximizing confidence in the product.
Invest in video formats that allow you to communicate information answering the pain points of the engaged customer and improve detailed product knowledge: walk-throughs, hands-on demos, product highlight videos, or Q&A sessions.
Be transparent and comprehensive. With buyers spending hours doing their homework before committing to a brand and purchasing, be the brand that sums up all the crucial information in one video or a video series. If you save your target audience time and add value to their experience, they will reward you with conversion in return.
Monitor analytics
Analyze viewer interactions and see how different levels of engagement impact conversion. Taking a data-driven approach like this can help you refine your content strategy and uncover trends that will boost conversion rates.
You can find the data you need in your video platform. To be able to answer the questions above, segment your audiences into groups according to their level of engagement, look at how these groups convert, then serve them the last piece of content or information that is likely to encourage them to buy.
You can also track back what drove engagement in the first place and figure out the most effective combinations of video formats, creatives and CTAs. Or, explore what led to disengagement of your customers (length of your videos, irrelevant content, etc.) to avoid these factors in the future.
2.
If there’s one thing to keep top of mind about customers today, it’s that they crave convenience. In the digital conversion stage, it’s imperative to streamline the path to purchase as much as possible to make it easy for customers to convert. This includes removing all obstacles or additional unnecessary steps. For example, single-page checkout systems have been measured to provide a conversion rate increase of up to 21.8%.
Streamline processes with interactivity
Pick relevant interactivity elements and add them to your videos in the final digital conversion stage, such as add to cart functionality directly in videos, buy button overlays, or pop up ads when viewers pause a video, inviting them to add relevant items to their cart that they have just seen in action in your targeted video content. When it comes to call to action buttons, you can choose from various options: “buy now” or “add to cart” being two of the most commonly used.
E-commerce and social media integrations
Advanced integrations allow you to publish video content to third party platforms, like Shopify. This means you can access, browse, and manage your video content directly from your e-commerce platform, centralizing control. Data transfer also becomes easier, giving you better access to insights from your e-commerce platform.
Social integrations to channels like Instagram or Pinterest enable you to easily distribute videos to social media. Since the average person spends 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media daily, this is a powerful way to re-target them with products they’re already interested in, highlight a sale, or offer other time-sensitive benefits to encourage conversion.
In this final stage of the customer journey, focus on content that shows products in use to support brand aspiration and give customers a way to buy what they want directly. Or create a series of videos guiding your customers through the checkout process step by step to eliminate confusion and move them through quicker to complete their purchase.
Brightcove is a reliable, scalable, and secure platform for video delivery. See how it can work for you.
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