How (and why) video can increase conversion rates

Since the advent of YouTube, and even before, online video has become (or most certainly should become) an integral component of every marketer’s tool kit. Why? Because people are visual, they like to be entertained and when they want the answer to a question, they don’t want to work too hard to get it. Video delivers on all three fronts.

Consider these statistics from ComScore:

1. 187 million people in the US watched 48 billion online content videos in July 2013. The average American spent more than 22 hours watching online video.
2. Professionally produced video optimized for eCommerce outperforms user-generated video (UGC video) by 30%, delivering a 24.7% lift as compared with an 18.7% lift for the UGC video.
3. Retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors.
4. 96% of online shoppers watch online video.

And from eMarketer:

1. Approximately half of marketers who use video in email campaigns see increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading the email, and increased sharing and forwarding.
2. 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide cite video as the type of content with the best ROI.
3. The eTailing Group found that 73% of online retailers used video on product pages in 2010, up from 55% in 2009 and only 20% in 2005. 74% of the top 50 retailers used product videos, 40% used category videos, and 38% used other types of informational videos.

And from Internet Retailer:

1. 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in their online purchase decisions. When a video is information-intensive, 66% of consumers will watch the video two or more times.
2. Shoppers who viewed video on Stacks and Stacks product pages were 144% more likely to add to cart than other shoppers.
3. A Cisco survey of US and UK consumers finds that shoppers prefer to research products online prior to making in-store purchases and recommends making video content available in-store by kiosk, touchscreen and smartphone integrations.
4. Shoppers who view video at Onlineshoes.com convert at a 45% higher rate than other shoppers, and the site has seen a 359% year-over-year increase in video views. Product pages with video have higher conversion rates than product pages without video.
5. Visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not.
6. Ice.com found that viewers who chose to view video converted at a 400% increase over those who did not. Ice.com also credits video with decreasing returns by 25%.

The list of compelling stats goes on and on and on. And the results are clear. Using video vastly improves a marketer’s online ROI.

How can you use video on your brand’s site to improve ROI?

1. Create an explanatory video that is designed to give a clear overview of your brand offering and place it on your homepage. DollarShaveClub is, perhaps, the best, most famous example.
2. Place product specific videos on individual product pages within your website to fully illustrate the benefits of your product. Here is a very clear and concise video from a company called Black Rapid that makes camera straps.
3. Use video on your landing pages. Fitness trainer Carl Juneau managed to increase his conversions by 46% by switching to a video-only landing page.
4. Use video in your email marketing. With the adoption of HTML5 by many email platforms, as many as 58% can watch a video directly within the email without having to link off to a web page.
5. Use a video as your call to action. A “watch the video” link can increase conversions as much as 30%, according to ConversionXL.
6. Particularly useful for online retailers, use LiveLink-style technology to embed clickable links within your product videos which makes it easy for viewers to obtain more information about or buy the product you have featured in the video.

With these compelling facts and use cases, there’s really no reason you shouldn’t incorporate video into your online presence. It’s increasingly less expensive to produce and the ROI garnered from implementing video more than pays for itself several times over.