Many people conduct extensive product research online prior to making a purchase decision, and product videos play an increasingly important role in this research process.
Since product videos provide a visual demonstration of your products' features and benefits, they can be a great addition to a product page to help to influence conversion rates on your e-commerce site. What you may not have considered is the value of placing your product videos on video hosting sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, etc.
As ReelSEO.com founder and creator, Mark Robertson, states:
The huge availability of video content...is encouraging people to attempt to find video content for all their queries, including any pre-purchase product research they’re engaged in. At worst all that’s been wasted is a minute’s effort, but at best, the user gets an opportunity to see the product first hand, learn about its features, and perhaps even watch a review.
For e-tailers, placing product videos on hosted video sites provides increased opportunity for product brand exposure. Embedding a "click here to buy" while your video is playing makes it easy for consumers to commit to the purchase decision. ReelSEO provides an example of how Zappos.com is using product videos on YouTube for this very purpose.
These video hosting sites also facilitate consumer engagement by providing social sharing opportunities in the form of customer reviews, video responses and re-publishing on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
As Robertson states, an added benefit can be search engine optimization (SEO) for your e-commerce site assuming the video hosting site hasn't classified its outgoing links as “nofollow”. Obviously in the case of Zappos.com and YouTube there has been a workaround via the "click here to buy" link embedded into the video.
Done right, placing product videos on sites like YouTube is an effective way to help your customers understand your products' brand value. It can help drive traffic back to your product page(s) for additional information such as pricing and availability, and ultimately help customers make the decision to purchase.
Related post: It’s a self-service world. Does your e-commerce content serve your customers?