In 2023, a whopping 91% of businesses incorporated video into their marketing strategies. Video content is popular for a reason: Ecommerce businesses can use videos to advertise products, foster brand identity, and heighten customer connection. Plus, posting video content is essential if you want to reach audiences on popular platforms like TikTok and YouTube. But how can you transform your brand’s video views into purchases?
Shoppable video technology lets ecommerce businesses turn video content into a vehicle for direct conversions. By utilizing a shoppable video platform, brands can add clickable product links that give video viewers a direct path to purchase.
What are shoppable videos?
Shoppable videos are interactive videos with embedded product links. They feature pop-up product tags that appear during video play, which indicate that the content is interactive. Viewers can click on these tags to add products to an online shopping cart. Shoppable videos appear on ecommerce websites as well as social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Videos’ shoppable links provide customers with a seamless shopping experience. Buyers can purchase items without needing to navigate away from the video content and search for the product themselves.
Types of shoppable videos
Shoppable video content comes in many forms, and you’ll want to cater your videos to the product you’re selling. You’ll also want to make sure to follow platform-specific best practices, like prioritizing short-form videos for TikTok.
If video production isn’t your specialty, or if you’re hoping to put your product in front of new audiences, you might consider partnering with an influencer to create shoppable videos. Incorporating influencer marketing into your shoppable video strategy can also help you increase your social media engagement and forge deeper connections with customers.
Consider these popular content video formats for inspiration as you start developing your brand’s shoppable media:
- Product demonstrations. Demonstrations help viewers understand your product's appeal by showcasing how it performs. For example, you might showcase the different settings on a vacuum cleaner.
- Unboxing videos. Unboxing videos tap into the excitement of receiving a new product. They often include commentary describing the products alongside first impressions.
- Comparison videos. Comparison videos discuss the similarities and differences between two or more products. These videos might compare similar products from competing companies or different items from the same brand.
- Tips and tricks. Tips and tricks videos provide viewers with instructional context about a product, showing social media users a product’s real-life applications. This category includes recipe videos from cooking brands or makeup tutorials from beauty brands.
- Reviews. Review videos provide a fair, objective assessment of a product’s quality. Influencers or unaffiliated third-party creators often create these types of videos.
- Brand stories. Storytelling videos give viewers insight into the people or processes behind your product. This category includes content like founder interviews and behind-the-scenes looks at how a product is made.
- Live videos. Livestreams help video publishers connect with their audience in real time. Businesses can host livestream shopping events on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Amazon.
How shoppable videos can impact your ecommerce business
Shoppable videos streamline the shopping experience, which can benefit customers by saving them time while simultaneously helping businesses drive sales. Here’s what integrating shoppable videos can do to help your ecommerce company achieve its goals:
Drive online conversions
Compelling shoppable videos can showcase your product’s appeal and spark consumer desire, which can urge viewers to immediately purchase your products. Product tags help customers understand which products are for sale with a single glance. They also let viewers act on impulse by immediately adding items to an online shopping cart. This immediacy can prevent customers from overthinking their products and abandoning their carts.
Enhance product discoverability
Given the popularity of the video-specific app TikTok—and the addition of short-form video features to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube—an increasing number of social media consumers are viewing video content. A recent survey found that 51% of people are more likely to share video content than static images. Shares and interactions lead to more eyes on your content, which can lead to a larger base of potential customers.
Plus, short-form video platforms like Instagram Reels operate with a continuous scroll model. The platform’s algorithm might place your video in front of viewers who didn’t intentionally click on your content.
Collect data
Data generated by shoppable video content can help you refine your marketing strategies. Track marketing metrics including watch time, engagements, and link clicks, then use this information to identify successful video formats.
For example, if your top-performing video on TikTok is a product demonstration of your company’s jade face roller, you might decide to produce demos for additional beauty products.
Top shoppable video platforms for posting
The product tags on your shoppable videos will look slightly different depending on which platform you post them on. That’s because different platforms have different native tools you can use to create your shoppable videos.
These are some of the best shoppable video platforms for publishing interactive video content:
Your ecommerce website
You can post shoppable videos directly to your ecommerce website, allowing viewers to see your products in action and quickly add them to their shopping cart. You can also use this functionality to improve your website’s mobile app by making your customer’s shopping experience more interactive.
Instagram Shopping
Instagram has more than two billion monthly active users, and a whopping 70% of the site’s active users use Instagram Shopping. You can use Instagram Shopping to post and create both shoppable video content and shoppable photo content. Retailers can tag up to five products in shoppable Instagram videos. The platform supports both organic content and paid shoppable video ads.
YouTube Shopping
You can use YouTube Shopping if you’re enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program, and you’ll need to connect an online store to your YouTube account to enable shoppable video features. YouTube’s shopping features include integrated analytics, so you can easily track the sales performance of the products you tag in shoppable videos.
TikTok Shopping
By integrating a Shopify store with TikTok Shopping, you can easily sell products on the popular video-sharing app—but you don’t actually need to create a full TikTok Shop to post shoppable videos. To do so, simply post a video to TikTok as usual, then select “Add Link” and link to your product.
Amazon Live
Amazon Live is free for approved US retailers and influencers with active Amazon stores. With Amazon Live, sellers can livestream shoppable videos directly from Amazon’s website. Amazon rewards successful publishers with prominent video placements that can support product discovery.
Top shoppable video platforms for creating content
Although many social media platforms have native tools to help you create platform-specific shoppable videos, you can also use a host of external tools to create polished shoppable media. These videos can integrate into your ecommerce site and be used across different social media platforms:
Quinn.Live
Quinn.Live allows users to import videos directly from their social media channels and transform them into shoppable content, streamlining the video production process. Quinn.Live is compatible with Shopify, too. Merchants can use the tool to integrate shoppable videos into their online store.
VideoWise
VideoWise is a Shopify-compatible tool that allows users to import content from social media platforms, add shoppable features, and embed videos into their ecommerce websites. The site also offers social listening tools to help brands identify user-generated content featuring their products. In addition to helping small business owners monetize their own content, VideoWise users can monitor mentions and add shoppable links to creator videos.
CommentSold
CommentSold is a shoppable video platform that integrates with Shopify and popular social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. This tool supports video uploading as well as livestreaming. It also features a Shopify integration that can help you create a dynamic mobile version of your site, complete with video and livestreaming.
Shoppable video FAQ
What is a shoppable video?
Shoppable video is a form of interactive video content with embedded product links. Viewers can use these links to add featured products to an online shopping cart without clicking away from the video. Shoppable content provides a user-friendly shopping experience and helps publishers increase engagement.
Can videos be shoppable on Instagram?
Yes. Approved Instagram accounts can use Instagram’s native tools to tag up to five products in videos. Creators can share shoppable Instagram videos in their organic video feeds or run them as paid advertisements.
How do shoppable videos work?
Shoppable videos incorporate links or interactive product tags directly into the content. These interactive elements allow users to purchase items directly from the video with just a few clicks. Incorporating shoppable media into your video commerce strategy can help your brand drive sales and keep viewers engaged.
