Driving E-Commerce with Video Streaming

E-commerce continues to be a major contributor to overall global retail sales, and all indicators point to significant growth over the coming years. From 2014 to 2022 alone, e-commerce sales grew by 327% to $5.7T. Forecasts show no signs of slowing down and expect that figure to reach $8.1T by 2026.

While e-commerce has grown rapidly, it has always faced one significant challenge. Consumers have to purchase from online shops and marketplaces without ever touching, feeling, trying on, or experiencing the product. Thus, it’s critical to communicate the value, features, and benefits of a product so the customer can come as close as possible to experiencing it.

When selling through bulletin boards or during times when image quality was low, communicating and creating an experience through words was paramount. As marketplaces took off, getting the perfect set of photos has been a top priority for businesses and independent sellers alike. And now with the explosion in social commerce and the extraordinary growth of platforms like Shopify, video is quickly becoming e-commerce table stakes.

Benefits of Video in E-Commerce

We regularly discuss the benefits of video marketing, but many of these benefits are amplified when strategically used for e-commerce. According to our research, 84% of consumers are convinced to purchase after watching a video.

E-commerce videos bring numerous benefits beyond simply selling a product. They can introduce your brand story to new customers and help build familiarity and loyalty for existing customers. In both cases, there’s a clear emotional connection that video fosters between your businesses and your audiences.

Video also provides the closest thing to creating an in-person experience. It gives customers around the world, on any device, up close and personal access to your product and brand. Whether showcasing the product in use, giving a 360-degree view, or broadcasting a live shopping event, video can break down barriers in ways that photos and text simply can’t.

For marketers to truly reap the benefits of e-commerce video, they need a video tool that integrates with their existing tech stack and the channels they use to market to their customers. Brightcove has the integrations you need to make this easier than ever.

Using Video to Boost Shopify Conversions

Shopify is the world’s leading e-commerce platform. Millions of merchants across 175 countries have used the platform to drive over half a trillion dollars in sales. While these figures show the vast opportunity the platform provides, it also means they face stiff competition from sellers across the web.

Luckily, Shopify merchants have several options for using video to boost sales, increase brand awareness, and grow their businesses. From a brand perspective, videos are a great way to introduce new customers to your company while building community and loyalty with existing customers.

One of the most obvious benefits is that videos provide an enhanced way to showcase your products. They allow you to go more in-depth about functionality, specifications, and other details that text and images simply can’t communicate. From feature highlights to visual storytelling to showcasing the product in use, an on-demand library of product videos allows users to truly experience the product before purchasing it.

Brightcove makes it easy to manage your videos in Shopify. Through our integration, you can connect to your video library and publish your videos directly to your Shopify e-commerce store. The integration eliminates the need for additional tools or apps by allowing you to seamlessly publish and manage your videos all from a single platform.

As with all video initiatives, understanding how your videos are being consumed will allow you to continuously optimize and boost performance. Using Brightcove analytics, you’ll be able to better understand which Shopify videos are most effective at engaging customers and driving conversions.

Social commerce has seen its popularity skyrocket in recent years. Between 2020 and 2022, social commerce grew by almost 70%, and the social commerce market is expected to top $2 trillion by 2025. According to Sprout Social, 68% of people have already used social media to make a purchase. They also report that an astounding 98% of users indicated they planned to make at least one purchase through social shopping or influencer commerce in 2022.

You may already be using Brightcove to publish content to social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. With our Instagram integration, you can also leverage video to build brand awareness, increase conversions, and drive advocacy there as well. If you’re not already using Instagram for social commerce, there’s no better time to start than now. According to Instagram, 44% of people use Instagram to shop weekly, and as the stats above highlight, you can expect this number to continue to grow.

The Brightcove Instagram integration allows you to seamlessly manage, distribute, and track videos with the security and reliability that our platform is known for. In addition to the analytics from Instagram, you’ll also be able to dive deeper into key performance metrics through Brightcove’s native analytics.

Leveraging Salesforce to Extend the ROI of E-Commerce Video

Beyond boosting sales on Shopify and social media, e-commerce videos can provide you with valuable insights to both increase conversions and attract new customers.

For example, when you combine your video analytics with a powerful marketing automation platform (MAP) like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, your approach to e-commerce video becomes much more strategic, honed, and effective. Instead of simply asking which videos get the most engagement, you can take a much more targeted approach with questions like, “From whom specifically are particular videos getting the most engagement?” In a data-driven world, insights from the video performance of key segments or individuals are a competitive differentiator.

Extending the value of e-commerce videos through Salesforce Sales Cloud and into Marketing Cloud starts with audience segmentation. Salesforce allows you to segment audiences by a variety of criteria that make the most sense for your efforts. These could include purchase history, location, customer lifetime value, demographics, product pages visited, or any other information you collect on customers and website visitors.

Using the Brightcove Salesforce Sales Cloud integration, you can analyze the video viewing behaviors of customers as they engage with your content. All of that data syncs with your instance of Salesforce, allowing you to see which videos resonate with your highest-intent audience and leverage them with other potential buyers.

With Brightcove's Audience Insights solution, you can further enrich Salesforce and turn all of this great data into actions:

Repurpose top videos. Top-converting videos can be reused in several places: your Shopify or Salesforce Commerce Cloud product pages, your Instagram Story Highlights, email promotion landing pages, or YouTube ads. This approach also works with top-engaged videos by customers with repeat purchases or high customer lifetime value (CLV).
Reach more customers. By understanding which videos are most popular with specific segments, you can create lookalike audiences and target them with ads that drive to these same videos. Similarly, you can use the video in email promotions to other members of that same segment who haven’t seen it yet.
Retarget or nurture customers. Customers who have viewed specific pages, products, or videos are particularly valuable because you know they are actively in the buying process. By retargeting them with paid promotions or emailing them those promotions, you can encourage them to take the next step in their journey.
Re-engage or convert customers. Identifying customers who didn’t complete most of a video (let’s say less than 20%) allows you to offer them a different video that may resonate better. You could also isolate people who watched more than 70% of a video but didn’t purchase. Since they expressed interest, you have an opportunity to offer them additional discounts or promotions to complete the purchase.

Centralize Your E-Commerce Video Strategy with Brightcove Marketing Studio

Using video for e-commerce offers a wide range of benefits. Not only does it help drive sales, but it supports brand building, community development, and increased conversions.

Using Brightcove Marketing Studio, you’re able to manage all of your video e-commerce efforts, from Shopify to Instagram, through a single platform. Combine these with the power of Salesforce, and you’ll have an effective omni-channel approach for your e-commerce video initiatives. The ease of use and additional layer of insights will position you to maximize the opportunities that marketplaces and a quickly growing social commerce landscape provides.