Have you ever visited a product page, only to leave straight away because its usability is so bad? I’m going to guess that you probably have. Take a minute to think about your own product page. Does it entice your visitors to buy? Are the features you added to your page working as well as you’d hoped?
If not, an important consideration is product video integration. When used well, product videos are a simple, effective tool that can double conversion rates. But when integrated badly, product videos can be more of a hinderance than a help for shoppers. So why is it that so many ecommerce providers are continuing to make the same mistakes when integrating their product videos? I will point out 3 points that are critical and that many people miss.
Mistake 1: Your Product Videos are Too Intrusive
Autoplay
We’ve all been there, receiving an unwelcome surprise as the sound from the autoplaying video blasts through your headphones, clashing with your iTunes playlist and leaving you scrambling to find the video’s mute button.
You might try to get around this by following in Facebook’s steps, automatically playing your product videos on mute. Don’t do it – it’s not going to do you any favours. Whilst you spare your customers the noise intrusion, autoplaying your videos can really slow down your ecommerce page. This is going to increase your bounce rate because potential customers don’t have the time or the patience to wait around for a product video to load.
Finally, if a customer is visiting your product page on their mobile, then autoplaying a video is likely to use a substantial amount of their data and drain their battery. This is not going to get you in your potential customers’ good books, so it’s best to avoid it altogether.
Let your customers choose to play your product videos. It’s been noted that if you try to push something on your customers too much, they will become irritated and suspicious and leave – it’s just bad sales practice. Your customers will appreciate that they’ve got the option to choose for themselves and the result is that everybody is much happier!
Mistake 2: Your Product Videos are Too Hard to Find
Whilst some make their product videos too intrusive, others don’t make it clear at all that there is even a product video on the page. You need to find some sort of middle ground between the two if you want the video integration to be a success for your ecommerce site.
Location
Firstly, you should think about the location of the video on your product page. Wistia researched this and found that if your product video is located at the top of the page, it is 38% more likely to be played than if it’s located at the bottom.1
It is also important to include your video in a place where customers would look for other visual cues, such as with the other product images. It wouldn’t be a good idea to incorporate the video next to the ‘add to cart’ button, for example, because this is where customers look when they’ve already made a decision to purchase, not when they want to find out more information about the product.
Play Button
It should be obvious that the product video is actually a video! A study found that adding a visible ‘play’ button to the video can increase views by a staggering 50%. Don’t forget play button integration in your product page – here’s an example of how DemoUp integrate the play button into product pages:2
Mistake 3: Integrating Product Videos Without Value
Poor Quality Videos
A product video is a really useful sales aid because it helps to explain the product to the customer in more detail. This is why videos should be of a high quality, so that customers are able to properly see the product and understand its features. A low quality video isn’t helpful for customers and might actually have a discouraging effect, since it reduces the credibility of your ecommerce site, thus reducing your customers’ trust levels in you as a provider.
Irrelevant Videos
Last but not least, make sure your videos are relevant to the product that you want to demonstrate! It sounds obvious, but a customer doesn’t want to sit through a 5 minute video which only actually shows a 3 second clip of the product in question. Make sure your content is relevant to keep your customers’ attention, otherwise it’s likely that they will lose interest and look elsewhere.
It’s worth investing a little time into your product video integration since the benefits that product videos can bring are advantageous for both ecommerce providers and customers. If you get your product integration right, the rest will follow on its own.
