Using Videos Effectively to Boost Your eCommerce Conversions

Every eCommerce platform benefits when their site is getting plenty of visits, and that is great. But what matters most is that those visits become conversions. After all, those are the ones that will impact your bottom line!

Now, there’s no magic method to turn visitors directly into buyers all at once. There is, however, a way of leading them, little by little, to a purchase with a funnel. And no funnel works better than a video-powered one.

Video content lets you come across as a reliable and relatable brand, while communicating your products’ features effectively. You can even clear up prospect’s doubts without having to contact them individually!

The thing is that no professional video company, regardless of skill, can give you a one-size-fits-all video style capable of doing all of that at once. Different kinds of videos work best for one goal or the other. So today, we are going to explore why those purposes matter and which types of video favors them the most!

1. Winning People’s Trust & Hearts

Buying online has inherent risks, and most people are aware of that.  In fact, 81% of consumers feel concerned when purchasing an item from a website they don’t know.

For that reason, it’s vital to come across as a reliable brand and make your visitors as familiar as possible with your company. In this section, you are going to learn about two types of videos that are particularly good at accomplishing this.

Testimonial Videos

Few videos inspire as much trust as testimonials.

In them, a former customer describes their experience with your eCommerce platform. That frequently means explaining how your company helped them, and whether they would recommend it or not. It goes without saying, their review is always positive!

With testimonials, viewers may conclude that if the customer on screen has had a good experience with the brand, why wouldn’t they as well?

The thing is, some testimonials fail to inspire that feeling. Their brands make the mistake of using a scripted testimony, or even worse, they use actors instead of real customers, which ends up feeling artificial. And viewers are good at spotting content like that.

Those videos defeat the purpose of elevating consumers’ trust –and honestly, they tend to be quite cringy. So, find real customers that are happy with your service, and have them relay their experience. It’s a simple, yet effective formula for a great video!

Culture Videos

It’s a well-known fact that people are more likely to shop for brands they like and empathize with. Now, it’s relatively easy to generate empathy towards someone, but towards a company? That’s another thing,

Luckily, there’s a type of video that can help: culture videos.

Most of the time, these videos show how life working in the company is, but they can also revolve around a specific corporate event or anything else related to the enterprise. Their main purpose, however, is to convey the brand’s vision, mission, and values, to win viewers’ hearts.

To work though, your video should manage to trigger positive emotions in the viewers.  Try to touch a chord with them by provoking joy, nostalgia, admiration… you get the picture. Make a real connection and you’ll have hit culture video gold.

2. Show Them What You Got

Ok, now your visitors have grown to like your brand and even put their trust in it. But what’s in it for them? How can your products help them?

Your site should have content addressing those questions in a way that distinguishes your eCommerce solution from the competition. So now we are going to talk about two video styles that excel at those goals.

Product videos

Product videos perform exceptionally well in e-commerce environments. After all, it’s the closest customers can get to a hands-on experience with the item online.

These videos give a full description of it and its benefits, and most times, show it in use. They are highly useful for people who are on the fence about buying that product since they can have a more accurate idea of what to expect from it.

To attract those potential buyers, you should stick to this popular rule of thumb: show, don’t tell. A video that seems more like a list of features will neither engage viewers, nor convert leads.

The best way to portray your products’ benefits is by using storytelling to show them in context, in situations that your target audience can relate to.

Explainer videos

Even if you deal with intricate products or complex services, an explainer video can make your offerings approachable to any kind of audience.

Explainers convey your value proposition in a way that’s understandable and entertaining to the audience. Firstly, they introduce your customers’ pain-points, and then they move on to defining why and how your company solves them. But not all of them do that in the same way.

The best ones use creative and fun scripts and eye-catching visuals. That means they make the most out of storytelling, lighthearted explanations, and top-notch audiovisual resources.

3. Deal with Their Concerns

Once your potential customer is on the verge of converting, they may have doubts about your product that prevent them from taking the leap. They can be unsure on how exactly they can use a product, or have questions about the product or even the eCommerce store policies.

Surely your customer assistance team could handle some of those reservations, but many factors can keep visitors from even contacting them. Fortunately, you are about to learn about two types of videos that can address those last-minute reservations quickly and effectively.

FAQ Videos

Frequently Asked Questions videos are the ones your customer service staff love the most, since they keep them from having to answer the same questions over and over again.

As you can deduce from their name, these videos cover your customer’s most common questions, assuming that other customers will have similar doubts.

The key to making a FAQ video helpful from a conversion standpoint is that they should be based on genuine and relevant customers’ questions, and enhance the viewers’ experience with on-point content and subtle CTAs.

If you need to cover a variety of topics in your questions, you might want to divide the content into different videos according to theme.

How-to Videos

Some people hesitate about getting a product when it seems too hard to handle. In those instances, showing a video that teaches them how to use it can be the ideal channel to mitigate their hesitations.

That’s what how-to videos do best. They give a step-by-step explanation on how to manage a particular product or service, or how to accomplish specific tasks with them.

They can address other topics as well, as long as they are related to the product in question. For instance, if you were trying to sell a cooking pot, you could launch a series of tutorials on how to cook different types of pasta.

Parting Words

There’s a long journey between the moment your eCommerce platform’s visitors enter your page until they decide to purchase a product. In every step of the way, there’s an ideal type of video that can help them move forward.

For the visitors, it’s a progressive road. They watch a video that elicits trust in the brand, so they go on to check out another one regarding a product. That guides them towards another video to clear their doubts, and after that, if everything went smoothly, they are finally ready to seal the deal.

As you may have noticed, there can’t be one of those steps without the other. What use would it be to inspire confidence in your brand if there won’t be a piece of content to showcase your products effectively?

At the end of the day, what will boost your conversions isn’t a single video, but a synergy of strategically placed, meaningful audiovisual pieces.

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