Videos are known to accelerate conversions by helping customers better understand the product. For the uninitiated, 64-85% of the website visitors are likely to buy a product after watching a video. More importantly, incorporating videos gives your store 50X chance to appear on the front page of Google results.

Sure, even your copy, images, and testimonials could be in a way used to convince customers to buy your product. However, videos have a magic of their own; specifically, when it comes to inside-out demonstration of a product and the benefits, it offers visitors. Here, I walk you through 6 video optimization tips for your eCommerce store.

1. Develop Platform-Friendly Videos

As it turns out, content, be it any type, needs to be optimized to fit the platform of your choice. In the case of videos, knowing the types of videos and its exact length, help you come up with a more effective video marketing strategy for different platforms.

For instance, in the case of Instagram videos, it should be no more than 30 seconds. Facebook videos generally don’t last more than 1 minute.

The case of YouTube is however different. You are free to develop longer videos here. But then, you can’t go overboard and create epic videos. People’s attention span is growing shorter and shorter, day by day. So, it has become more and more essential to create videos that go with the platform. In other words, if you want to develop detailed videos, opt for YouTube, while Instagram videos can be relied on to create short snippets to promote products or catch people’s attention quickly.

People’s attention spans are growing shorter day by day, which is why you need to make videos that meet user expectations of the platforms that you are posting to. For example, for YouTube, you can create in-depth videos, while for Instagrams your videos should be short and sweet as their only intention is to catch people’s attention or to quickly promote your products.

If you think only a more extended video will help you justify the product or service you are offering, then you could even think of breaking the video into 2 to 3 parts.  No matter what, make sure your videos stick to the platform’s requirements.

2. Integrate Videos Into Emails

For the starters, adding videos in your email subject line boosts open rates almost by 19%. And, if you have more click-throughs on your mind, forget static shots, instead focus more on GIFs, as they are known to evoke curiosity among readers. Use video-editing software to come up with interactive videos for your emails.

Email Marketing is a commonplace amongst eCommerce stores. So, combining it with videos will only give your customers an extra push to open your emails.

You could even think of sending different kinds of videos to customers, from how-to to thank-you videos. Also, personalize your emails and segment the list so that only the right videos enter the customer inboxes. For instance, you could send product videos to customers who have expressed interest in your products.

3. Create Specific Videos For Specific Stages In Email Marketing

If anything, product videos should be used with loads of discretion. For instance, for welcome emails, you should come up with a different video than what you would come up for cart abandoned emails. For the former, you could create videos related to product launches and so on. For the later, you need to encourage the customer to make the final purchase. And so for such emails, you need to make use of customer reviews, or any other psychological trigger that might convince the customer to go for the product, no matter what.

So, think where all you could include your product videos. In these 3 cases, you could incorporate them without much thought process.

  • Product page
  • Welcome emails
  • Paid advertising on Social Media

4. Integrate Videos In Your Blog

In addition to emails, you could even integrate emails in other content marketing formats as well. For example, in your blog, slideshares, webinars, case studies, white papers and more. It not only helps you reduce the cost of videos but also helps make the best use of your new content assets.

5. Leverage Video SEO

If you want to achieve more visibility on Google, then you need to opt for Video SEO. Given that YouTube is a favorite search engine and Google considers video as part of their ranking factor, it makes sense to optimize your videos in keeping with the SEO basics. Meaning, you need to add keywords to your title, tags, descriptions and video filenames.

And, don’t forget, if you are posting videos on YouTube, you need to include a link of your store in the first line of your description along with other crucial links.

6. DIY Videos And How-To Videos

If you ask me what the most popular video categories on YouTube are, the answer is DIY videos and How-to videos. These two types of videos promise better viewership and conversions. You could even send your DIY videos to YouTube and Instagram influencers who are known to publish a good number of DIY or unboxing videos.

Given that e-commerce site deal in hundreds of thousands of products, creating a how-to or DIY video is a subtle yet entertaining way to engage with the users. You could even include links to product pages in the video enabling conversions.

No matter what, focus on creating high-quality videos. And, keep your branding and sales pitch as subtle as possible. Just squeeze in a log somewhere in the corner and a passing reference of who developed the video. That’s about it. Who knows, your video may be picked up by a high-flying influencer, and in turn, attract traction and conversions in huge numbers.