How to Drive Revenue from Your eCommerce Product Videos

January 11, 2023 BY REBECCA KLEIN

Accessibility in the eCommerce Era [Free eBook]


Today’s consumers seek a retail experience that offers the best of both the on- and offline shopping worlds—combining personalization with competitive prices, choice with detail, and product tangibility with convenience. In this competitive marketplace, how can brands deliver the eCommerce shopping journey that consumers seek? Video.

After all, video empowers brands to show their products in action—and gets viewers closer to an in-person shopping experience at home. Here’s an overview of the steps you should take to create engaging and effective eCommerce videos that drive sales and increase cart values.

Create the right content

Your videos will achieve the best results when they resonate with your target customers and give them that final push they need to click “Add to Cart.” Follow the steps below to define the best video strategy for your brand:

Consider your audience

To ensure your production time and money are worth the results, you need to think about what type of eCommerce shopping experience your customers are looking for in the first place. Ask yourself the following types of questions:

  • What do your customers want to know about your products?
  • Where are your customers most active online—and how can you reach them there?
  • What steps do your customers take when researching products?

Once you understand the answers to these questions, you can create content that resonates best with your audience and develop a distribution plan to reach them where they already are.

Define your brand style

As is the case with all content you create, your videos must align with your brand style so that you can provide a consistent customer experience. Consider everything from your tone and messaging to the individuals you put on camera through the lens of whether they are in accordance with the overall image you want to create and maintain for your brand.

Determine your goals

To get the most out of your eCommerce product videos, you need to define your specific goals before brainstorming a concept. Are you looking to increase brand awareness and reach new audiences? Are you hoping to convert a certain percentage of viewers? Are you aiming to promote a particular product or line? No matter your goal, defining it from the onset will help you achieve the best results.

Expand your audience

Once you have your basic strategy in place, consider how to provide an even better viewing experience.

Add captions

Your eCommerce video content has even more potential when it’s accessible to all viewers. Adding captions ensures viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing can access your content. Additionally, captions will also improve the experience for viewers who have neurological or learning disabilities, as they can benefit from seeing and hearing your video content at the same time.

Captions not only improve media accessibility but also give your videos a robust search engine optimization (SEO) boost. When you don’t caption your videos, search engine bots rank your content solely on metadata. When you add captioning into the mix, bots can read and index your videos more accurately based on your script.

Captions also allow your audience to view videos in sound-sensitive environments—from public transportation to the library. This is extremely valuable in today’s marketplace, where customers are always on the go.

Add audio description

In 2018, the National Health Interview Survey found that 32.2 million adult Americans, about 13% of the population, have trouble seeing even with corrective lenses. For eCommerce companies, that’s a lot of potential customers. By adding audio description, eCommerce brands can make their videos accessible to viewers who are blind or have low vision. 

Audio description describes the visual elements of a video within the natural pauses of the audio. Without audio description, your eCommerce product videos are likely inaccessible to viewers who cannot see a screen.

Consider that many product videos are often videos of the product itself with music playing in the background. If viewers cannot see the screen, all they get from your product video is background music and perhaps audio commentary. If you don’t add audio description, you will exclude a significant portion of the population from your audience and potential customers.

Additionally, your brand may be required by law to provide accessibility services such as audio description and captioning. For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires places of public accommodation to provide “auxiliary aids.” It’s been widely debated whether the ADA applies to online-only businesses since it’s not explicitly written into the law. However, several court rulings provide precedent for the ADA’s interpretation regarding digital companies. For example, in the case of NAD vs. Netflix, it was determined that online-only businesses must comply with the ADA.

Incorporate interactivity

Interactivity is an extremely popular feature in today’s video space. By creating shoppable videos, you can make it even easier for your customers to make a purchase. After all, they won’t need to leave their current window to add something to their cart—decreasing the overall number of clicks from watching your video to buying your product. Consider incorporating calls-to-action and add-to-cart functionality to convert more viewers into buyers.

Adjust your strategy

To maximize the potential of your eCommerce videos, you need to continually refine your strategy based on what is and isn’t working.

Review your analytics

Integrating with an analytics platform empowers you to get a solid sense of how your videos perform and if your content is meeting your previously defined goals. In particular, it can be valuable to review this data for insights into the following:

  • Your viewers: Who is viewing your content, and where are they coming from?
  • The viewing experience: How long is your video being viewed? Which devices and operating systems is your audience using?
  • Performance: Where is your content performing best (i.e., your mobile app player, your homepage, your social channels)?

Once you understand these metrics, you can optimize your next video accordingly. For instance, if your video is receiving the most views on a particular channel, you can develop your next video with the length and content best practices for that channel in mind.

Consider customer feedback

After you have a few eCommerce videos under your belt, you can perform some A/B testing to compare the results of your different efforts. Your analytics come into play here, but don’t forget to evaluate customer engagement. If you shared or promoted content on social, did certain videos receive more likes, shares, and positive comments? This information can be a good indicator of the type of content that catches your audience’s eye and keeps them engaged.

You can also look to your customers when it comes time to decide which types of videos to create next. If you collect feedback through customer surveys or other sources, use this information to understand further the kind of information your audience is looking for and build out your video content accordingly.

Video can be a powerful tool for engaging your eCommerce audience and moving them along the sales cycle. By following the steps and best practices laid out in this blog, you can ensure you get the best return on investment for your eCommerce product videos.


Accessibility in the eCommerce era. Read the ebook.

This blog post was originally published as a guest blog by Kaitlin Dell’Erario, then Senior Demand Generation Manager at Brightcove, on May 29, 2019. It has since been updated for accuracy, clarity, and freshness.

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