The 8 principles of Shoppable Video
What better time to put everything we have learned into practice than with our third post about shoppable video? In our first blog post, we established that e-commerce has entered the era of ‘digital experience shopping,’ in which consumers expect online browsing to be fun instead of functional. In the second blog post, we took a closer look at different types of shoppable video and explored the ways in which Alibaba and Ted Baker use it as a selling tool. With this third post, we are going to dissect a few of our critical success factors for shoppable video and split them up into eight actionable principles.
1. Know your customers
The process of creating a shoppable video should start with the consumer. It may seem obvious to state the importance of understanding your target audience, but many companies still do not prioritize this crucial factor. Ignoring your target market’s preferences may lead to a broader reach, but it limits conversion due to a more generic design and interaction offering.
There are many ways to research your user base, a handful of which are both low-cost and low-effort: you can find a wealth of information available in existing literature, send out questionnaires to your current customers, conduct interviews with people in your target environment, or use data analytics from other products that have already been studied.
2. Make it fun
The first of our three success factors is ‘entertaining video that sells.’ This factor can be split into two parts: the video and the experience.
The videos you create should be fundamentally fun to watch, serving up content that can compete with other videos that exist purely for entertainment (i.e. YouTube). The content should be packaged in such a way that viewers do not get the feeling that they are part of an infomercial. And while an entertaining video is a start, the viewers still have to be converted into buyers — that’s where part two comes in.
The viewer experience can be enhanced by making each interaction fun. Try, for example, to entice people to immerse themselves in the experience by pressing a button. When they are directed from the video to another page, just remember that the engagement needs to continue to prevent people from abandoning their shopping carts.
If this sounds like a challenge, that’s because it is — creating entertaining video that sells is not easy to achieve all by yourself! The key to success lies in finding the right partners for different project elements, collaborating with art directors to create compelling content, and bringing on interaction designers to design fun video elements or influencers to reach the right audience.
3. Work for it
Some brands have already started experimenting with shoppable video. However, most of them have only made one or two videos, instead of committing to the medium for the long haul. If you really want to make shoppable video work for you, you shouldn’t expect it to be a silver bullet from the get-go. To create a successful shoppable concept, it must be fully incorporated into your digital content strategy.
As discussed in our last article, there are multiple forms of shoppable media, each with different levels of interaction and execution. At its core, each new concept is the same, but when you are creating an entirely new way to showcase your brand identity, it’s important to take ownership and make shoppable video unique to you.
To start, you might want to take a lean approach, which will allow you to reach your customers in a whole new way at the lowest possible cost. Your existing customer base is a great playground for video creation: As a test, start by using low-fidelity video with minimal viable interactions, and share it with a select group. Take your customers’ feedback seriously, and slowly build upon each video using their comments and critiques. Fail fast and fail often.
4. Engage your users
Interactivity is the backbone of shoppable media. Without interactive features, people cannot make a purchase or be redirected to an ecommerce page from the video, making it equivalent to an ordinary stream or commercial. Interactivity leads to higher engagement with the content,
a shorter customer journey, and higher entertainment value.
In contrast to older shoppable formats, users can now interact with the video player itself. This allows them to continue watching the video while enjoying its shoppable capabilities. Consumers can add an item directly to their shopping cart or even complete their transaction within the video player, streamlining the shopping process and increasing customer conversion. A more in-depth analysis about the shopping process and conversion rates can be found in our previous blog post [link].
There is also the possibility of integrating different kinds of games to engage users — for example, games or game mechanics that are directly related to the product or company, including trivia, guess the price, or guess the product. Engagement-based games are an equally valuable feature, such as spin the wheel, self-destructing coupons, or regular coupons. Each target group should be served different types of interactions that suit their preferences.
5. Create a consistent experience
Most companies are active on many different platforms in order to reach as many viewers as possible. For now, we are focusing on three types of platforms: Owned & operated (i.e. brand website), linear (i.e. TV), and social networking services (i.e. Facebook).
Most shoppable videos are published on an owned website, mainly because it is the easiest way to make interactions work: when broadcasting using your own platform, you have full control over all the elements you release to the world. In contrast, when you are using Facebook, you are completely dependent on their API. This often means that when consumers want to interact, they first have to switch, while watching, from a third-party platform to the owned website. This extra step eliminates the advantages of a shorter conversion process.
It is possible to make your videos interactive and shoppable on other platforms as well, but the process requires another approach: You have to play by the platform’s rules and be aware of the limitations at hand. The good news is, there are many ways to work around them. For example, you can use Facebook Messenger to directly buy a product that is shown in a video.
6. Use a live feedback loop
One element that can add lots
of value to your strategy is live video. Live differs from on-demand video in its simultaneity, immediacy, authenticity, and unpredictability (Feuer, 1983) — all of which are important qualities of an engaging experience.
Simultaneity is when the broadcast is being recorded while the viewer is watching, meaning that they can impact the show immediately. Brands can use the user input from polls or chats to produce a show that better fits the needs of their target group, users c feel more engaged.
Immediacy is the idea that new information is being revealed while the event unfolds. The people who are watching at that moment are the only ones that have instant access to that information. Immediacy contributes to the feeling of scarcity and exclusivity, which can lead to more people buying the product.
Authenticity is the third defining characteristic of live video: it is real and unedited. Thanks to a more authentic interaction with your audience, viewers feel a stronger connection to the product and the brand. It feels much less like a sales video, and brings a much-needed human element to digital marketing.
The last characteristic is the notion of unpredictability. During an unscripted broadcast, anything can happen, which makes it more exciting to watch.
While live video presents many attractive advantages, there are a few disadvantages that are important to note. One major drawback is video latency, which is platform-specific and can vary from 2 to 15 seconds. (https://www.exmachinagroup.com/playtrivia). This may cause trouble when you are streaming on multiple platforms at the same time. Although different platforms are improving their services by introducing low-latency streaming, you must take latency into account when designing interactive elements for your video, or deciding where to stream.
7. Make sure the tech is reliable
The success of your shoppable video relies heavily on the the back-end technology that supports it. This is one of the things that you absolutely need to have working properly, especially given the insane amount of videos that are available online. If you don’t prevent your videos from buffering for minutes on end, or troubleshoot buttons that are not working, viewers will simply navigate to another video, leaving yours behind.
There should also be a real-time connection between the products you’re displaying and the inventory at your disposal. It would be a shame if a customer was to see a product in the video, attempt to buy it by clicking on it, then find out that the product is actually sold out.
When you want to make use of live video, the technology behind it will need some extra attention. Your servers and software should be able to handle the extra load, since live streams create a huge influx of viewers all at once. Everybody is watching at the same time, in comparison to views that are more evenly distributed over time, as is the case with on-demand video.
8. Establish design heuristics
Over time, leading usability experts have introduced heuristics to guide designers as they create user interfaces. The most popular ones are the ten usability heuristics from Nielsen.
Existing usability heuristics are mainly focused on user interfaces for websites, apps, or other digital products, as opposed to video overlays. The good news is, there is quite a bit of overlap between these ‘traditional’ interfaces and the interactive overlays tailored to video content. In these cases, existing usability heuristics must be combined with specific design specifications. Given how dynamic and limitlessly creative video content can be, you should try to establish your own guidelines for your shoppable video application and use the existing lists as inspiration.
If you want to start with shoppable video, let us help you. At Ex Machina Group, we provide everything you need, including concept creation, business modelling, front-end design, back-end development, and operations. Check out our website to get inspired by our portfolio and client list. Or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
The is the last in a series of blog posts in which we outline the advantages of shoppable video and what it can do for your business. This article was co-authored by Ruben Rouwhof.
