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Is click-to-buy video the next big thing?
Increasingly, content is being placed at the heart of brands’ and retailers’ online strategy as a way to deepen their engagement with their target audience and existing online communities. Within this, video is emerging as a key channel in its own right, offering increasing interactivity and offering more value to the end user. However, despite its growing importance most retailers are not yet capable (or in some cases, willing) to take on the burden of creating and managing video content – but recently we’ve heard about how it can be a success for brands, and once more, a potentially serious income generator for ecommerce sites.
No strangers to cutting-edge online technology, Thomas Pink was one of the first retailers to launch a web TV channel on its site, and is now looking at adding live chat to enhance its online customer service. The brand’s ecommerce manager Nadine Shahara was quoted in New Media Age as saying the retailer had already had a positive reaction to video, having documented a “huge uplift on page dwell time from incorporating video”.
Meanwhile Tommy Hilfiger has just launched a series of interactive videos promoting the brand’s Autumn/Winter denim collection, which has also been hailed a success. Just two weeks after its launch of the clickable videos, which link directly to Tommy Hilfiger’s ecommerce system to inform viewers of what’s in stock, the brand was claiming more than 3,430 views.
Tommy Hilfiger’s video has also been designed to cater for an international audience, by being connected to a live international product database, the videos generate live product information, in the user’s own language, regardless of where the user has watched from.
This aspect of the video’s potential for ecommerce is perhaps the most interesting. One of the major concerns with clickable video is its cost and manageability – with this kind of technology on hand, where it can talk directly with a retailer’s ecommerce system and keep track of stock and price fluctuation, most fears should be allayed.
Up to the minute content is crucial with ecommerce, as is the importance of aligning in-store with online - clickable video will allow retailers more than ever to bridge this gap and with this latest technology providing live product information, larger retail brands ought to view this as the next ecommerce “must-have”.
If you are curious about how to develop a video strategy, you might want to attend the Video Advertising Summit in a few weeks.
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