Using Product Videos for eCommerce to Increase Your Sales + Examples

When I realized I was spending more than 60% of my day on my desk glued to the laptop, I desperately wanted an ergonomic laptop stand. 

After scouring the internet and looking through dozens of options, my search was about to hit a brick wall—but I hit the jackpot instead! 

A brand added a product video demonstrating how their laptop stands work in a real-life setting. 

This video brought the product to life and showed exactly how I could use the stand. 

Ultimately, it gave me the confidence to hit that buy now button and place my order. 

Like me, 85% of shoppers consider product videos an essential part of the online buying experience.

So, whether you’re selling something as simple as t-shirts or more complicated items like machinery, product videos for eCommerce can be a total game changer. 

In this article, I'll explain how your eCommerce business can benefit from product videos and share six proven tips to create videos. Stick with me until the end to find multiple examples of how it's done! 

What *really* is a product video?

A product video shows your product in action, highlighting its core functionality, key features, and different use cases. 

Product videos go beyond static images to humanize your product and give potential buyers a glimpse of what they can do with it. 

These videos replicate an in-store experience by showing viewers a 360-degree view of your product and how they can use it for different needs.

How can eCommerce brands win over their buyers with product videos?

Picture this: you’ve finally set up your dream eCommerce store. 

All that's left is for your products to sell like hotcakes. excited hoots

A few weeks in, you realize sales are coming slower than expected. Worse, many customers are returning items they bought. That’s the stuff of nightmares!

You’re left wondering: what could you have done differently? 

The short answer is, adding videos to your product pages and listings. 

Let's look at five key reasons why video content can turn the tables in your favor:

1. Build buying intent and confidence

Despite the massive growth of eCommerce businesses, many online shoppers still hesitate to buy certain items they can’t touch and feel with their hands. This is where product videos give potential customers a complete view of your products, building their confidence and strengthening the buyer intent—just like my story about the laptop stand. 

A product video shows instead of simply telling buyers what they’ll get. Add user-generated content (UGC) to the mix, and it'll be the ultimate cherry on the cake since user-generated videos are the most trusted type of content among 51% of consumers globally.

2. Improve buyers’ understanding of the product

An often overlooked aspect of eCommerce marketing is how well target buyers understand your product(s). If they don’t fully know what you can do for them, you can’t convince them to give you a shot. 

eCommerce videos can do the heavy lifting to effortlessly explain your product(s) to every prospective buyer. In fact, 96% of video marketers say video marketing has increased user understanding of their product or service. Not just that, seven in ten customers worldwide claim that video content improves their understanding of a product. 

Put simply, product videos effectively communicate the quality and benefits you offer. 

For example, this humorous video by Tentree personifies their t-shirt to explain how it’s better than fast fashion clothes. It’s witty, quick, and explains the value of Tentree’s organic clothes.

3. Deliver immersive shopping experiences

Ask any eCommerce business owner what their number one priority is, and they'll unanimously tell you this: keeping buyers engaged throughout the customer journey. Prospective buyers can drop off at any stage of the funnel—unless you give them an enjoyable and fully immersive buying experience. 

With video content, you can make your customer journey more interactive, give shoppers a 360-degree experience of your online store, and maximize engagement across the funnel. 

That’s exactly what Artsabers achieved using shoppable videos by Videowise. The Star Wars-themed brand gave their buyers a real-life experience of their sabers’ look and feel with on-site shoppable videos. 

4. Offer more accessible and digestible content

At a time when our attention spans are shrinking by the day, most people won’t spend enough time reading your product descriptions. eCommerce product videos give them a faster, more snackable alternative to learn more about your products and make buying decisions. 

Converting a 500-word block of text into a 30-second video gives your potential customers a quick peek at what you're selling and what's in it for them. Plus, adding subtitles and voice-overs makes video content more accessible to buyers with disabilities, maximizing your video marketing reach. 

5. Repurpose videos and increase shareability

A product video is more than just a video. You can repurpose your videos into many formats—think reels, TikToks, video ads, GIFs, video newsletters, and so on. So, adding videos to your digital marketing strategy only increases the amount of content you can roll out. 

What’s more, videos are easily shareable. 51% of people are more likely to share videos with their friends than any other type of content. You can repurpose a single product video in different formats and get clicks from everywhere. 

5 tips to create compelling product videos for eCommerce and delight buyers 

91% of businesses will use video as a marketing tool in 2023. No surprises there. 

But here’s the kicker: not every brand can crack the code for effective eCommerce product video marketing. So, your next challenge is learning how to create product videos that boost conversions and buyer engagement. I’ll decode this for you in five actionable steps:

1. Touch pain points and show buyers what’s in it for them

All the best eCommerce product videos focus more on the end-users than the product itself. The reason is simple. When people want to buy a product, they think of how it can improve their lives instead of the actual product features. 

Consider this: if you want to buy a dishwasher, you’ll think about how many dishes it can fit, how many wash settings it has, how much maintenance it needs, and similar questions. You’re less likely to think of its turbo cycle technology and other jargon-like features. 

That explains why your brand's video content should answer how your products enhance your buyers' lives. Think from their perspective and highlight:

• The problems your product can solve

• The before vs. after benefits it can offer

• The overall impact and difference it can create 

Case in point: Ava Estell used this approach for its shoppable video campaigns and ramped up its conversion rates to 21%. 

The all-natural skincare brand used Videowise to embed informative videos on their eCommerce site. These shoppable videos demonstrated the benefits and before-vs-after looks of using Ava Estell products to nudge potential customers toward an informed buying decision.

2. Make your videos personable by sharing your story

Today’s savvy shoppers don’t fall for pushy marketing campaigns. Instead, they prioritize a brand’s values. Research proves that 82% of consumers make buying decisions based on brands’ purpose and authenticity.

Use this insight to your advantage and spotlight your values, mission, and vision in your eCommerce video marketing narrative. 

Putting your customers at the core of your videos is just the first step. Give them enough reasons to care by talking about your overall purpose. Here are a few ways to do it:

• Share your brand’s story to highlight the struggles that led to the creation of your online store, like Vibha Harish talking about her challenges with PCOS and medication that encouraged her to create her brand, Cosmix

• Spotlight your brand values or mission to resonate with your target audience, like Patagonia’s video for its Baggies shorts emphasizing their mission to save the environment

Source

• Share short videos on social media platforms explaining how your products fulfill your brand values and give back to the community

Remember: your buyers don't want to know just the product specs. Give them a story they can relate to, and watch your video content work its magic. 

3. Include a clear call to action to get more clicks

Product videos can educate your intended buyers about your brand or convince them to place an order. In either case, you want viewers to act once they've watched the video. 

With a call to action (CTA), you can direct them to take the next steps. The clearer and more convincing your CTAs are, the more viewers will perform the next steps—that’s a no-brainer. But most folks drop the ball when writing CTAs, leaving money at the table. 

I’ve curated these tips to help you write persuasive CTAs that hit the right chord with your customers and make them tick:

• Prioritize the benefits instead of the action, like “Make your skin glow now” over “Buy this moisturizer”

• Keep it crisp and quick, like “Buy before we stock out” over “Buy now before we run out of stock”

• Write from the customers’ perspective, like “Give me 20%” over “Get 20% off”

• Choose action words to encourage viewers to take action, like "Tell me more” or “Add to my list”

CTAs can make or break the impact of your product videos. Invest extra time crafting and A/B testing your CTAs to ensure you get the maximum conversions from each video. 

4. Optimize the loading speed for mobile and desktop

If you think your role ends with video production, this will make you think again: two-thirds (64%) of consumers will wait no longer than 4 seconds for a video to load. This study indicates how different generations respond to a video’s loading speed on eCommerce business sites. 

Besides frustrating viewers, a longer loading time can increase your product pages’ bounce rate and tank your rankings on search engines too. 

The bottom line: you need to optimize your eCommerce product videos to load quickly on every device. But isn’t video optimization too complicated and technical? Not really. 

Here are a few best practices to incorporate optimization in your video production workflows from the start:

• Work with an effective tool for video compression to reduce file size without compromising on the quality

• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to increase the speed of content delivery and reduce the buffer time

• Remove audio from the file if your video has subtitles and captions to deliver the message

• Choose MP4 and WebM formats to create lightweight videos for all platforms and browsers 

Video optimization is no rocket science. Done right, it can increase your content’s viewability across all devices and increase the click-through rate. 

5. Plan for repurposing and distributing videos everywhere

Creating videos is just the first step. You can repurpose one eCommerce video in a dozen ways to get more eyes on your products. 

Take a look at these quick tips to repurpose a product video:

• Convert it into a blog post

• Publish a series of short videos 

• Create an audio file and add it to a podcast

• Design a carousel post for social media pages

• Make short reels for social media and product listings

• Share it via email, either in textual format or embedded

The rule of thumb is to create once and distribute forever. Add a repurposing plan to your video strategy to make a streamlined distribution pipeline for your posts. 

7 types of product videos that actually work (+examples)

You’re all geared up to create a video strategy and kick-start your eCommerce marketing campaign. But you’re stumped by this question: what type of product video would work best for your buyers?

Research suggests that brands create at least 14 types of videos. I’ll walk you through the seven most popular product video types with examples to show them in action:

1. Product feature

Best for: Showcasing a product in a 360-degree view

A product feature video spotlights a single product's value propositions with the narrative centering around its best features and unique qualities. This video includes shots from multiple angles with a few close-ups to give viewers a complete look at the product. 

It's one of the most common types of product video, with 45% of eCommerce brands creating one for their flagship products. 

Example: Allbirds

Allbirds’ product feature video for The Trail Runner SWT does justice to the name by showing the shoes in action during an adventurous trail across the mountains. This short video perfectly highlights the shoes’ strength and usability in real-life scenarios.  

2. Explainer videos

Best for: Describing the process behind building a product, explaining complex products

An explainer video is typically a short video demonstrating the process or reasons behind a concept. For an eCommerce business, explainer videos help clarify their behind-the-scenes manufacturing flow. You can also use this video type to explain how your product works, in case it's complicated. 

Example: Pilot Coffee

Pilot Coffee collaborated with a niche creator to produce this explainer video on direct trade coffee. This video conveys how the brand supports local coffee farmers and explains the backend process of creating the finished product, highlighting its community-driven purpose.

Watch the video on their Instagram page here.

3. Customer stories

Best for: Building social proof and winning customer trust

Customer story videos help you skip the hard sell and let your happy buyers drive sales. This video captures existing customers' unfiltered reviews of your product or service. It creates credibility for new customers to give your brand a shot.

Example: Your Super

Your Super is the perfect example of this type of eCommerce product video. The superfoods brand has created an entire YouTube playlist with customer stories. These videos vary in length and are unedited, coming straight from happy customers. 

Source 

4. Influencer videos

Best for: eCommerce brands looking to boost brand recognition

You can also create product videos with influencers to increase visibility and reach a broader audience. Getting influencers' endorsements can also increase brand awareness. Influencer videos can be in multiple formats, like tutorials, reviews, or shoppable videos.

Example: Athletic Greens

Athletic Greens collaborated with Allyson Felix, an athlete and mega influencer, to create this promotional product video. She talks about her personal gains from taking AG1, winning the brand some precious real estate on her Instagram profile. 

Watch the full reel here on their Instagram page. 

5. Shoppable videos

Best for: Creating an immersive and engaging shopping experience.

Shoppable videos share a complete view of a product and give buyers the convenience of instantly buying it. It dives into the finer details that make your products stand out and make a case for your brand. 

On top of giving customers a quick and digestible video to learn more about your brand, shoppable videos can also personalize the buyer's journey. 

Example: RIFRUF

RIFRUF introduced a less mainstream product like dog shoes to the world with the help of shoppable videos. Videowise’s interactive on-site videos highlighted the product’s features, produced useful analytics, and engaged mobile and desktop visitors alike. 

The result? RIFRUF’s conversion rates went up to 16%, and the brand generated over $50k in revenue from these videos.

6. Tutorials and how-to

Best for: Creating more transparency with your customers and addressing pain points

Tutorials and how-to videos educate your buyers about how they can get the best out of your product or service. These informative videos target specific pain points and answer the most frequently asked questions to help prospective customers make an informed buying decision.

Example: Velasca

Velasca’s video marketing efforts largely focus on educating existing and expected customers about different ways to use, style, and care for their shoes. They've produced videos demonstrating the best ways to clean and store these luxury shoes. 

7. User-generated content

Best for: Positioning your brand as a fan favorite and trusted name 

Unboxing videos, product reviews, how-to videos—user-generated content comes in many different formats. This video type spreads positive word-of-mouth and reels in first-time buyers by letting your customers take center stage. 

Example: Then I Met You

Then I Met You is a great example of a UGC video type. A simple YouTube search for the brand will show you tens of user-generated videos. These videos reach varied audiences and generate more interest in the brand while helping potential buyers get honest reviews.  

Take your business to the next level with eCommerce product video marketing 

With too many choices and marketing noise, shopping online is becoming increasingly challenging for your buyers. Chances are, your eCommerce brand is (or might soon be) buried in an over-saturated market. 

While there’s no magic wand to cut through the competition and steal the show, creating eCommerce product videos is a powerful solution.   

Give your customers the convenience of shopping in a store with immersive videos. If you own a Shopify store, try Videowise to create highly-engaging shoppable videos that make your buyers fall in love with your product.