Shoppable Video Platforms: Which One Is the Best For You?
In 2020, US adults alone consumed 3.5 hours of video daily. It’s evident that consumers today are willing to digest quality video content. As a retailer, how do you take advantage of it?
The answer is pretty simple – by making shoppable videos.
A shoppable video refers to videos, whether live or on-demand, that allow a viewer to initiate an order from within the video. Consumers can directly add the product demonstrated to their cart and make a purchase or learn more from the video itself about your company.
It’s for this obvious reason that the popularity of shoppable video is growing which has led to the development of many shoppable video platforms. All in all, using a shoppable video can enhance your customer engagement and increase your sales.
But with so many shoppable video platforms available, how do you decide which one is right for your business? Fret not, this guide will tell you everything you need to know about the types of shoppable videos and which platform will contribute towards increasing your eCommerce sales.
The Trend of Shoppable Video and Its Various Types
We all know convenience is what separates online shopping from offline. Now imagine you are watching a runway show of a newly launched shoe collection, and you suddenly have an urge to find a particular product shown. Shoppable video lets you click that item, find out more information right there and if you like it, you can add it to your cart directly. You can do all this without leaving the video.
You can emphasize your product feature in the video, display a catalog of your inventory, or run a tutorial video with a shoppable video. A shoppable video brings out the value of your video while making it all entertaining and engaging to watch.
More and more retailers are implementing shoppable videos as an effective marketing tool. In fact, the State of Video Marketing 2020 report by Wyzowl reveals that 84% of consumers get convinced about buying a product or service by watching their video.
Zariin, a DTC luxury jewelry brand that retails in over 21 countries and 200 stores worldwide, saw a 117% increase in customer engagement with Swirl Shoppable Videos. As a digital-only brand, the brand realized it would be hard to create a lasting relationship with its customers. New brands are always trying to attract new customers and chances are that customers may never return after the first purchase.
That’s when Zariin decided to create unique video content that provided an immersive experience to its target audience. And the result —
Why Are Shoppable Videos Important?
Better Engagement With Your Audience
Showcase shoppable looks and deliver a truly immersive experience for your customers. You can run live videos where viewers can add products to the cart and complete the purchase without leaving the live show. Furthermore, it enables real-time audience feedback and interaction.
Increase in Sales
Drive more sales by inspiring customers with more confidence to buy online, like they do in-store. You can use shoppable videos to tell your brand or product story and get your target audience emotionally connected to your brand.
Besides, a shoppable video eliminates the need to search through thousands of products on your website. Instead, you provide them with a curated product catalog that they can shop directly from the video. This enables them to purchase faster without having to think twice.
Different Types of Shoppable Videos
One-to-many Live Video Shopping
As the name suggests, one-to-many live video shopping is where one person broadcasts the video to many consumers at the same time. It can be as small as ten people and can go up to million viewers.
This usually works well for product launches, concerts, tutorials, and many other formats.
It focuses more on the entertainment value and provides a good opportunity to engage with your audiences and influence them.
One-to-one Virtual Shopping
Having one-to-one conversations between a brand associate and a customer creates an in-store experience. It allows your store associate or brand influencer to personalize the customer experience and assist them in their buying journey.
This works well particularly for high-end luxury products or complex items.
It allows you to leverage your team’s comprehensive knowledge and share a curated catalog with shoppers to help them make informed choices.
Short Videos Stories
Short video stories are pre-recorded interactive videos that can enhance your product pages. You can easily embed videos with tagged products, display product benefits, and validate your offerings.
It’s a great opportunity to offer a curated catalog to your shopper and inspire confidence and convince users to shop online.
Virtual Clienteling
Virtual clienteling is the process of reaching out to your existing customers and engaging with them to build long-lasting relationships. By understanding your customer behavior and purchase lifecycle, your brand associate can provide personalized product and/or service recommendations.
They can proactively reach out via text, WhatsApp, and voice call to let the customer know about new products, re-stocks, ongoing promotions, or anything in between.
5 Best Shoppable Video Platforms to Choose From
Shoppable video platforms provide a space where the brand can engage and sell its audiences without leaving the platform. It unifies all sales channels into one where consumers can watch or stream the shoppable videos, select the product, and make a purchase directly from the video.
Thus, successful deployment of shoppable video requires simple buy-in video capability for platforms so as to blur the gap between scrolling and shopping. Besides, leveraging customer data is a must to retarget existing customers and send out personalized recommendations based on their interactions.
Below is our list of the five shoppable video platforms helping brands leverage live commerce to deliver an immersive shopping experience in 2022.
1. Swirl
Swirl is a new-age live commerce SaaS platform that enables brands and retailers to use interactive videos to power their businesses with real-time virtual shopping.
Brands can set up a virtual store and deliver a truly immersive experience to their customers. Using Swirl technology, you can curate recommendations based on real-time analytics and engage, convert, and retain more customers.
You can easily create byte-sized short videos and live stream shopping sessions with its built-in CTAs that allow the end consumers to send voice messages, add to cart, live chat, ask questions, and so much more.
Most importantly, it allows you to integrate customized workflow as per your business needs. For instance, a hospitality company looking to generate orders might want to use CTA as Book Now in their videos. Or, for a telecom company, they can use Register Now as their CTA in the video.
Pros
- Access to customer data for retargeting existing shoppers
- Predictive scoring for qualifying leads and increasing the chance of conversion
- Seamless integration with Shopify
- Video conversion workflow can be customized to suit the industry needs
- Works without a technology integration
- GDPR Compliant, Multi-language and multi-currency support
- Affordable usage-based pricing to suit the needs of all business sizes
2. Bambuser
Bambuser provides a robust platform for ecommerce retailers to incorporate live streaming activities into their marketing campaigns. It enables brands to embed a code on their website to set up live stream events.
It has a global presence in over 195 active countries and a player interface in 35 languages. This makes it easy for retailers all over the world to offer shoppable videos to their consumers and increase sales.
What’s more, it provides one-to-one video consultation for personal shopping and customer care. It enables dynamic product display and add-to-cart within the video to enhance the shopping experience.
Thus, brands can go live through the app and let their audiences shop live. It helps collect data and provide customer insights to help better build a content marketing strategy.
Pros
- Offer ADA-approved UX designs for a superior experience
- Allow you to cast directly to Facebook and YouTube
- Let you simulcast across multiple websites
Cons
- Expensive pricing, and not suitable for non-luxury businesses
- Lack of live analytics and consumer predictive scoring
- Lack of Virtual Clienteling solution
- Lack of Video Conversion workflow customization
- Requires a tech integration to start using
3. HERO
HERO interactive shoppable video platform enables brands to provide a one-to-one virtual shopping experience. Brands can build one-to-many interactive shoppable videos for viewers across platforms and showcase products in a real way.
Trusted by over 200 brands, HERO is a fast-growing live commerce technology popular for low-touch installation, fast onboarding, and dedicated training.
Furthermore, it offers virtual clienteling to empower your sales team to reach out to your existing customers with personalized recommendations via text, email, and WhatsApp. You can send out special announcements or schedule in-store appointments to build customer loyalty.
It offers built-in sales attribution to keep track of your sales reps’ performance and reward them when they achieve their target. Lastly, it is fully GDPR and ISO compliant to protect its customer data.
Pros
- Track real-time team performance and manage contacts directly from the dashboard
- Set reminders to follow up with customers at the right time
- Provide virtual phone numbers and email addresses for each team member
Cons
- Lack of customized conversion workflow like Swirl
- No live streaming technology
- Works only for retail stores with an offline business model
- Requires a tech integration to start using
- Premium pricing
4. Livescale
Founded in 2016, Livescale is a live shopping solution that uses the power of live streaming to empower brands and ecommerce retailers. It provides instinct checkouts and product feed sync for a seamless shopping experience within the video.
Livescale boasts of top brands names include Vans, Roberto Cavalli, and Kiehl’s.
Besides, the live shopping experience can be accessed from all devices, including smartphones. Shoppers can buy from brands instantly, without leaving the video. You also get access to monthly live shopping webinars, 1:1 strategy sessions, and expert chat support to upgrade your team selling skills.
Pros
- Get real-time KPIs and full brand ownership of enhanced analytics
- Seamless connection to your ecommerce platform and payment solutions
- Offers interactive content, gamification features, and others
Cons
- Limited to only live shopping and doesn’t provide access to immersive short videos or 1:1 Video Shopping
- No means to retarget existing customers with proper virtual clienteling solution
- Lack of Video Conversion workflow customization
- Requires a tech integration to start using
- Limited to only Shopify and does not work with other ecommerce platforms
5. Firework
Firework provides a video shopping platform to help brands and ecommerce retailers create an engaging user experience on their website using short-form web stories and live streaming.
It enables you to showcase and sell your products via beautiful, low-latency streams. You can easily enable your brand associates and Instagram influencers to shop with their followers on your website.
Increase your conversion by simulcasting your stream to multiple locations at the same time and understanding customer behavior with first-party user data. What’s more, you can sell your products directly with interactive, shoppable video content. Viewers do not have to leave your video to purchase a product, thereby enhancing their shopping experience.
Pros
- Track progress by analyzing performance metrics and engagement
- Enable your viewers to use live-chat and emoji reactions for supercharging interactions
- Dedicated live commerce platform for publishers and businesses
Cons
- No means to conduct one-on-one video call consultation for a personalized experience
- Premium Pricing
- Lack of Video Conversion workflow customization
- Requires a tech integration to start using
Which Shoppable Video Platform Is the Best For You?
A shoppable video helps provide valuable insights into your customer preferences while providing an engaging shopping experience to your viewers. Implementing entertaining and engaging shoppable videos improves the conversion rate.
With a holistic video commerce platform like Swirl, you get to fulfill all your requirements under one roof with exceptional client-support and affordable pricing. It requires no app download and gives you complete control over the customer data. More than 100+ brands are using Swirl and have witnessed over 400% increase in add to cart and over 7X increase in customer engagement.
Which shoppable video platform are you going to use to engage your consumers?
This is a Guest Post written by Nikita Agarwal
About the author
I’m a content strategist, editor, and published poet, creating content for mainly SaaS-based companies. I write on topics related to business, technology, and branding. In my leisure time, you will find me binge-watching TV series or exploring new cafes in town. You can find me on LinkedIn.
SWIRL is a full funnel live commerce solution that helps marketers attract, engage and convert more customers. Enable your website or app with the power of shoppable content to increase AOV, boost conversions and retain customers. If you’re looking for a live commerce solution and want to discuss options, get in touch.