With the likes of Amazon, Alibaba, eBay and Rakuten ruling the e-commerce world and making lots of e-commerce videos, it is time for you to step up your game. If you own an online platform or are planning to start one, you’ve stumbled upon the right place.

Here I highlight the biggest enemies of an e-commerce platform, and why e-commerce videos should be your holy grail.

BTW, there are several KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that you should track for your e-commerce website. Shopify does a fabulous job of explaining them here. As I list down each type of e-commerce video, I’m also going to share what KPIs they influence. Good info to have, innit?

Read about the different types of e-commerce videos you NEED to include in your 2019 plans:

1. E-commerce product listing videos

You have an assortment of products on your website. Make a video for each of them. Yes, I said it. EACH. OF. THEM. But that isn’t enough. All these products are categorized under different labels, right? Make a video for each category. No, I am not kidding. If you’re looking for a tool to help you make videos at scale, give Rocketium a try. We have APIs to automate your video creation.

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Now, you may ask, what do I do with so many videos?

You can do a lot! Put them up on your website for each product listing, send them to your customers via emails, repurpose them for video ads on social media, and include them in your newsletters.

Videos on product listings get more sales

Numbers don't lie. They are your single source of truth. 90% of online shoppers have said that product videos influence their shopping and buying decisions. After watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online. Videos have an impact on software listings too. In fact, 69% of people have decided to buy software after watching a video.

Check out this classic example of a product listing video:

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Product video ads on social media drive website traffic

Business Insider reports that video ads have the highest CTR at 1.84%, of all digital ad formats (text ads, banner ads, and image ads). Did you know that 46% of online shoppers took some action after viewing a video ad on social media? In fact:

1. 26% looked for more information about the subject of the video
2. 22% visited the website named in the ad
3. 15% visited the company represented in the video ad
4. 12% purchased the specific product featured in the ad

Social media is a great place to create hype, build a brand name, and drive traffic to your website. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn have made it really easy to target users. You can pick a target audience based on demographics, geography, and interests, among many other factors!

👉 Continue reading: How do I pick a target audience for my video ads?

Here is an example:

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E-commerce videos for every product listing to improve SEO

Google loves videos. Search engines love video (yes, I mention Google and search engines separately, because Google deserves that!). It is a well-known fact that adding a video to your website increases its ranking on SERPs. You know those keywords you're targeting and hoping to rank above your competition. E-commerce Videos will help you do that.

Check this example out:

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Product offer videos to increase new user revenue

The holiday season is the best time to run offers and deals. Use this opportunity to bring in more qualified people from social media, forums, and groups from all over the internet.

You can also set up a physical Kiosk and show these ads on a display! Example of an offer video:

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The KPIs that these videos will influence are website traffic, time spent on site, bounce rate, average session duration, social media engagement, and advertising CTRs.

2. Abandoned cart videos

One of the biggest hindrances of any e-commerce platform is Cart Abandonment Rate. It is the percentage of shopping carts that are abandoned prior to the completion of the purchase. The typical shopping cart abandonment rate for online retailers varies between 60% and 80%, with an average of 67.91%!

Here are some of the reasons why your visitors are abandoning their shopping carts before purchasing:

• You add hidden prices at the time of checkout (taxes or a shipping charge).
• Your e-commerce website has a lengthy registration process and your users cannot pay without signing up.
• Your checkout process is very complicated or involves too many steps.
• Privacy/security concerns.
• Your delivery time was too high or you did not deliver to the desired area.
• You provide limited payment options.
• The user has decided to purchase the product from a physical store as opposed to online.
• Users want to wait for a lower price or for a sale to come real soon.

👉 Check out some pretty cool video templates we are giving away for free just for e-commerce websites!

So, how do you deal with this?

Send personalized email campaigns to bring back users with an abandoned cart

Here are a few of the benefits of personalized videos:

• Create a relevant experience that the customer remembers
• Increases conversion rates
• Empowers strategic email marketing (with segmentation and targeting)
• Builds a passionate audience
• Improves lead nurturing
• Drives better sales calls
• Increases customer retention

The first thing you need to do is create a series of 3 emails, each containing a different, personalized video. Using tools like MailChimp or Moosend, you can create and send automated emails at the right intervals.

Email 1: This email is a reminder email in which you inform the user that they have items waiting in their cart to be checked out. Ideally, you would send this out after 24 hours (1 day). Example:

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Email 2: Use this email to create a sense of urgency in the user. You can tell them that the cart is going to be "destroyed" soon, or the items added to the cart are in high demand and are running out of stock. Send this after 72 hours (3 days). Example:

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Email 3: Your last email to the user should come with a discount. Offer them something they cannot refuse. Send this after 144 hours (6 days). Example:

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These videos will influence your platform's churn rate and shopping cart abandon rate.

3. Sales, offers and discount videos

Another metric you need to follow very closely is New Customer Orders vs. Returning Customer Orders. Many e-commerce owners do the mistake of focussing their efforts on customer acquisition only. But customer retention is a whole new magical world. It can drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing, and higher-order values.

To influence this KPI, you would want to be in constant touch with your customers. Reside in their inbox, on their phone, and at the very least, keep popping up in their social media feed.

Video ads announcing holiday sales and discounts

Back in 2015, the online video ad market was only 10% of the size of the television ad market. By 2017, this went up to 14%! Zenith predicts this figure will increase to 23% in 2020.

As discussed earlier, social media is a great place to reach out to people. Make video ads that announce your discounts and offers boldly. Beat the drum. Get some attention. Add CTAs in the end, links in the description, and watch your sales go up. Here is an example video:

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Re-targetting your customers by showing them E-commerce video ads on social media is also a great way to re-acquire them, build brand awareness, and increase sales from existing users.

Email campaigns for product discounts, seasonal sales, and offers

Send out an email blast with personalized videos (by this I mean, put their name on the video) to all your existing customers. Add a list of items in this video that are relevant to the customer, products that they would potentially buy. You can get this data from their purchase history. Here is an example of the same video as above, but personalized:

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The Ecommercevideos will influence new customer orders vs. returning customer orders, sales, revenue per visitor, and conversion rate. While at the same time help you decrease the cart abandonment rates

What are your thoughts?

If you've scrolled this far, I'm certain I have convinced you to add videos in your 2019 plans. I'd be more than happy to help you plan strategies, figure out deadlines, and tell you KPIs and metrics you should be tracking for these campaigns.

With the advent of automation in video and banner ads, it has become relatively convenient to create videos. You can upload all the information at once and our software will create these videos for you automatically.

With the increasing noise in the market, it is important to automate your videos and banner ads. This will help you to streamline your focus on the high priority topics.

Just comment below, or sign up for Rocketium, and shout out for me on our webchat!