Video commerce is the process of promoting products and services over video on the Internet with direct sales via an e-commerce shop, usually linked directly from the video feed. Video commerce is most common over streaming platforms like YouTube, social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, directly in an e-commerce website or directly on video commerce platforms like Confer With. All of these platforms can demonstrate significant upturns in conversion as a result.
Video commerce is growing for 2 main reasons:
- Video has always been and continues to be hugely effective in communicating product features and benefits in an entertaining way
- The practice of direct linking in e-commerce to products, directly from the video reduces friction and improves conversion
When you combine these two factors together elegantly, you unlock a new opportunity to speed up the consideration and conversion process. Important evolutions in tech enabled customer experience have made all of this possible.
Compelling content drives consideration in video commerce
Images and content are compelling enough and go a long way toward demonstrating how a product would look. Video however allows visitors to connect with the presenter and ultimately the brand. Done well, product videos add the missing piece to the shopper consideration puzzle by explaining how it’s used, why the product is used and in what context.
Adobe and Google both quote well over 50% of internet users who purchase online, say they view videos of the products prior to purchase. This is a big statistic – it says that in well over 50% of purchases – there has been interaction with related video content.
Video commerce is driven by direct linking
Video shopping has grown to prominence because it drives so many damned sales. But how? It’s really been an evolution. It didn’t take long for people to start demonstrating videos on YouTube. Shortly after that, you could link to a website in the comments section. People found this drove sales. Almost in parallel, e-commerce optimisers were finding that the presentation of a compelling video on a homepage or product page led to increased sales.
Direct linking was born, and the moment it became social, people were adding links to videos, driving sales.
Video commerce technology
If video commerce combines direct linking with video, it makes sense that the two key technologies involved are video streaming and linking, but there is a little more to it.
Live streaming and non-live streaming in video commerce
If video is at the heart of it all, it makes sense that there are a few flavours and they differentiate based on extent to which they are live. With live streaming, you are posting live video for one of many people to watch. This might be over direct, one to one video, or one to many. The advantage of a live stream video is that you can do everything in real time, adjust based on the needs of the audience, as well as adjust your presentation if you sell out of the product you are selling! Live video is excellent for introducing a product to a customer or a customer bad, as well as selling products with limited supply. There are on average, 8 billion daily video views on facebook, which is a big figure – 20% of those are live and growing.
Non-live video streaming tends to be evergreen content (i.e. content that remains relevant to shopper for a long period of time after it is recorded). This content can be hugely powerful for product pages and websites, as well as engage audiences who were not at the live stream. Non live video assumes your audience needs.
When choosing a video commerce provider you will need to take into the purpose of your video, which will decide whether you need to go live or not.
Tagging and linking your videos
We have talked about linking to products directly to products and the benefits that brings. Video commerce technology enables you to do this at scale. Scaling it is achieved by being able to recognise products in the video (image and pattern recognition) and tagging them. Once you have tagged an image, you can automatically link to the product.
This speeds up the process and allows you to tag hundreds and thousands of videos fast. It also allows you to link to multiple products in one video.
Bringing it all together – bridging retail and e-Commerce
One of the most effective use cases in live stream commerce is pulling in retail staff to demonstrate product over video. Retail staff have the product knowledge and access to a product in the retail space. Those businesses that are effective in bridging retail and e-commerce can also provide access to the entire e-commerce operation to sell to consumers.
Effective use of the technology therefore uses video to demonstrate, uses image recognition to tag and the e-commerce operation to link to products to purchase.
To help you along, we have produced a guide on how to choose a video commerce provider. So get out there and take advantage of the new trend in e-commerce and retail!
