How Video Commerce Can Transform The Future of the eCommerce Industry?

With the growing demand for online shopping, eCommerce businesses consistently incorporate new features and solutions into their online stores to enhance their functionality and offer a better shopping experience to their customers. One such emerging trend is ‘video commerce as a solution.’ It is a solution that combines video content and online shopping where businesses use video content, allowing businesses to promote and sell products and services online. Additionally, it uses live or prerecorded videos to showcase products, where users can interact with their preferred influencers and hosts in real time while making purchase decisions. A recent study showed that 91% of consumers want to see more online video content from their brands. This explains why this solution has a significant potential to accelerate your business growth and boost ROI.

However, to leverage the capabilities of live commerce for your business, the first step is to integrate it with every eCommerce channel you use to sell your products. This process involves embedding video content into various online shopping touchpoints, such as eCommerce websites, mobile applications, and social media platforms. Since it’s a complex process to initiate in-house by yourself, you can partner with a professional eCommerce development company that offers video commerce platform development and integration services.

Moreover, several components of video commerce determine how it works and leads to conversions. This blog will discuss these components in detail and identify the must-have features of a video commerce solution.

Understanding Video Commerce Platform

Several leading brands like Lakme, GAP, Levis, and Vogue leverage video commerce to keep their customers engaged and stay ahead of the competition. But before incorporating it into your eCommerce store, understand the key components that sum up the video commerce landscape.

1. Discovery

One of the most significant elements of video shopping is discovery, as it helps both the shoppers and retailers. It allows the shoppers to identify which product best suits their needs and retailers to make a note of those needs and showcase them in the video. But to implement an effective discovery protocol to set clear goals for what your brand’s videos should achieve. Once the needs are identified, you can amplify and personalize the product videos for every user and improve their shopping experience.

2. Video Delivery

Video delivery is another important component as it determines how a shoppable video will be delivered and displayed to your customers – live and non-live videos (pre-recorded). While some customers prefer live video shopping, some may prefer on-demand video shopping that can be offered via pre-recorded videos that they can watch whenever they want and shop at their convenience.

Note- By leveraging eCommerce app development services, you can create a video commerce solution offering both live events and pre-recorded videos to deliver high-quality, shoppable videos that meet every customer’s preferred video shopping preferences.

3. Product Identification

The key player in the world of live video shopping is product identification and tagging. A video commerce platform identifies different products that can be tagged in a particular video, which shoppers can check out and decide to either be further immersed in the product or add it to their shopping cart for the final purchase.

4. Immersion

Immersion is an effective technique to persuade your customers to make the final purchase. While your video content will provide a briefing or, say, introduction to your product, immersion will lead them to more extended info about the product, such as specifications, available color options, and estimated delivery, as well as about your brand, like your brand’s vision, other products you might be selling, etc. To keep them engaged and encourage purchasing decisions, you can send them product links, related images, or other video links via email or WhatsApp. You can also provide an AR-enabled product try-on feature to increase loyalty.

5. Conversion

Every online selling effort of your business will be deemed successful when a prospective user is converted into a buying customer. In the case of video commerce, your brand’s video content, whether live or pre-recorded, will be seamlessly integrated with a clickable ‘add to cart’ button. This will connect the tagged products to the customer’s shopping cart and provide a seamless shopping experience from product discovery to purchase.

Benefits of Video Commerce for Your Business

In recent years, the concept of video commerce has gained popularity. According to a study by Global News Wire, the global video commerce market was valued at $527 billion in 2022 and is estimated to grow to $2.80 trillion by 2028. This states how beneficial this trend has become and will continue to power the eCommerce industry in the coming years. Now, we will discuss the core benefits of investing in a custom video commerce solution for your business.

• Enhanced Product Presentation

Video Commerce allows businesses to enhance product presentation and showcase their products more dynamically and engagingly than static images and text descriptions that usually divert the user’s attention. With video shopping, customers can see products from different angles, view them in action, and gain a more comprehensive understanding of the specifications, color, and other benefits. This can boost consumer confidence and help them make a purchase decision without a hitch.

• Improved Customer Engagement

Video content is inherently more engaging than static images or text and helps improve customer engagement. Since the user’s attention is only for a span of seconds, it can quickly capture it and keep them immersed in the shopping experience for longer intervals. As a result, customers are more likely to explore the entire product catalog and spend more time on the eCommerce website, increasing the chances of making a purchase.

• Immersive Storytelling

As part of creative commerce, videos enable eCommerce businesses to incorporate innovative and immersive storytelling practices as they showcase their products. These stories can evoke emotions and resonate with customers, creating a deeper connection. By showcasing the product’s use in real-life situations, eCommerce companies can tap into customers’ desires and aspirations, making their offerings more relatable.

• Leverage Social Commerce

Video Commerce aligns well with the rise of social commerce, where businesses can leverage social media platforms to promote their products. Integrating videos on social networks allows eCommerce companies to reach a broader audience, engage with potential customers, and drive traffic to their websites or product pages.

• Real-Time Interaction

Live video shopping is a growing trend in Video Commerce. It allows businesses to engage with customers in real-time, answer their questions instantly, and provide on-the-spot demonstrations as required. This interactive approach builds trust, reduces friction in the buying process, minimizes cart abandonment or product return rate, and drives sales.

• Data and Analytics

Video Commerce Solutions often provide detailed analytics on video performance. Businesses can track view counts, engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. These insights help in refining content strategies, improving marketing efforts, and gaining a deeper understanding of customer behavior.

• Mobile Optimization

With the increasing use of mobile devices for online shopping, video commerce can be an ideal solution that businesses can embed into their eCommerce app and allows customers to attend live events or watch pre-recorded videos in the app itself and shop or put items in the cart right away without giving it a second thought. To embed video commerce with your existing app, you can get expert assistance from a trusted eCommerce company that is well-versed with this solution and other emerging trends of the eCommerce industry.

Note- Remember that mobile-friendly shoppable videos provide a seamless and responsive experience, ensuring customers can easily view and interact with video content on their smartphones and tablets.

Looking to build a custom eCommerce app? Then, take a read at our comprehensive guide on eCommerce app development.

Essential Features of Video Commerce Platform

Features play a crucial role in determining the success of every solution, and video commerce is no exception. Hence, to create a competitive video commerce solution, consider the following list of must-have features.

1. In-call Product Recommendation 

This feature will allow you to offer personalized product recommendations in 1-2-1 live videos based on their past purchases and browsing behavior. To provide accurate, personalized suggestions, use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to suggest related or popular products. Remember that live video shopping, especially with personalized recommendations, can lead to higher conversion rates for your business. One another essential functionality under this domain is ‘intelligent product suggestions.’ With this functionality, you can offer AI-powered smart, real-time suggestions to keep the customer engaged and increase conversions.

2. Product Listings

Categorizing product listings in video content is essential to allow your customers to navigate through different items shown in the video easily. To keep them engaged and enhance their shopping experience, make sure to include high-quality visuals (images and video previews of products), including detailed product descriptions, like price, size, and availability. The more immersive and structured the product listings are in your video commerce solution, the higher the chances of the customers buying the product immediately.

3. Live Streaming vs Pre-recorded Videos

As aforementioned, video commerce comprises two modes: live streaming and pre-recorded videos. In live streaming, the customers can interact with influencers and sellers in real-time, ask questions instantly, and make final purchase decisions.

Whereas the pre-recorded product videos are best for on-demand viewing and allow your customers to view videos and shop for their preferred products whenever they want to. With pre-recorded videos, you can still keep them engaged even when you’re not available to interact or address their queries.

4. In-Video Shopping

One of the core elements of a video commerce solution is in-video shopping, which allows users to shop directly within the product video. With this feature, you can make the products shown in the video available to purchase with clickable product tags or links that say ‘add to cart,’ ‘learn more,’ or ‘buy now.’ In-video shopping redefines the concept of online shopping and is a perfect solution for your businesses to improve customer engagement, loyalty, and long-term relations.

5. In-video Chat, FAQs, and Social Interactions

The in-video human interaction is one of the most prominent features of a video commerce solution. In this feature, you can leverage the capabilities of generative AI for in-video chat functionality to allow customers to interact with influencers on live streams or over pre-recorded videos, even long after the live stream has finished. This will allow your customers to chat with the influencers, ask questions, and keep the live streaming interactive, enabling them to make purchase decisions quickly. Additionally, utilize social media to share and increase the reach of your products.

6. In-Video Shopping Cart and Checkout

In-video shopping cart and checkout is a feature where the shown products have a clickable ‘add to cart’ button. Once the user clicks add to bag, they get redirected to their shopping cart in the connected eCommerce app. You can move a step further in video commerce and add a ‘buy now’ option in your video content. This will enable in-video checkout, where users can quickly shop for their favorite products, make payments since a checkout system is integrated, and then provide an order summary– all while the video is playing.

7. Notifications

Sending notifications to your customers is important to alert them about new product launches within your brand and discounts available and keep them engaged until the final purchase. The push notifications will also include alerts for live-streaming videos, order summaries, and tracking.

8. Seller/Content Creator Tools

This feature is important to prepare a seller profile and make your customers acquainted not only with the brand but also connect them with the seller to improve loyalty. Additionally, it will also provide you with advanced tools for managing products, inventory, and orders and tracking performance and audience engagement.

9. Augmented Reality in Video Commerce

Augmented reality is a game-changer for video commerce. By leveraging AR, you can allow customers to virtually try on products or visualize them while video is on playback. Incorporating AR tools will also enable your customers to check how a product will look on them and try out particular items in different colors.

You can partner with a reliable AR/VR development company to integrate AR capabilities into your solution.

10. Social Media Synergy

Integrating social media platforms with your video commerce solution is essential to enable users to join live events via social media apps like Instagram. With this feature, you can share videos and products on social media platforms and broaden your customer reach.

Key Use Cases of the Video Commerce Solution

Video shopping is an effective eCommerce strategy and can be leveraged for various use cases. Let’s discuss them below-

1. New Product Launch

Use video commerce to showcase new product launches and generate excitement and hype amongst the users. You can host a livestream shopping event to demonstrate the features and benefits of a new product and create buzz and interest among potential customers. The Livestream video can also be converted into a shoppable video and hosted on the website.

2. Product Tutorials

Video commerce is an excellent solution to release and present product tutorials.

You can make videos to create tutorial content that shows customers how to use a specific product you sell. This generally includes step-by-step instructions or demonstrations of the product, which can help customers better understand the product and how it works.

3. Humane Product Interactions

By leveraging this solution, you can create a more personalized customer experience and enable human interactions to build trust in your product. Additionally, you can use livestream videos to interact with customers in real time, answering questions and providing personalized advice and recommendations.

4. Shoppable Ads on the Open Web

Since video shopping is a more immersive way to connect and attract potential users, you can use video ads to reach them and drive sales. For instance, show these ads on the open web and include calls-to-action or links that make it easy for users to make a purchase. This will also help you bring your digital storefront to the open web and compel potential customers to engage with your video ads and immediately purchase or add the product to their shopping cart without leaving the platform. Such strategies help you reach where your customers usually spend most of their time and eventually boost sales.

Final Words

Video commerce is a new concept but has immense potential that can significantly boost sales and customer engagement. By leveraging this solution, businesses can attract more users, allow them to shop for their preferred products, and persuade them to make a purchase decision that can contribute to boosting sales.

Create immersive shopping experiences with our robust video commerce solution. Contact Us today!