The Web can be static at times especially when buying something online. Adding video to your eCommerce website makes your products come to life. Discover the power of adding product videos to your eCommerce site so you sell more products.
Quite often when you purchase something, you pick it up and inspect the box or if the product is on display you take it in your hands and really take a good look at it. Online is a different story, most eCommerce sites have pictures of the products some might even have multiple angles of the product. Products images alone still don’t bring your products to life like video does.
Video is a powerful tool when selling products, it adds excitement, it adds life to whatever you’re selling, it adds a human element images simply can’t do. Let’s look at an example of how video was used on this off-road website to sell their suspension kits.
How Can I Add Video To My Ecommerce Site
The first step is coming up with an idea for a product video. The type of products you sell will determine if your video should be of you explaining the products, or like our example you actually using the product.
If you sell electronics, like cell phones or something small, “hand-on” videos seem to work best. These videos are of you with the product in hand, talking about its features, how to use it, showing the different angles of the product.
On the other hand if you are selling superchargers for cars and trucks you want to show the product on a car, maybe spinning the tires because now the car has so much more power than before, or maybe you hit the drag strip and show how much faster the car is.
If you are selling cosmetics have a make-up artist apply your cosmetics to a model and show how your cosmetics will make a woman look more attractive.
Another really important use of video to sell products is in Real Estate. I tour of the home video does much more than images do to help a person see themselves living in the home.
So brainstorm on the best approach to sell your product.
Production Value
I’m not going to get into the details about how to shoot your videos, that could be a whole other article. What I will share with you are some tips to make your videos look professional and sell your products.
Tip 1: Audio is just as important and video
You can have the best HD quality video playing but if the audio is poor or sounds like you are talking into a tube, you will definitely make people click away. Invest in a good lavalier mic if you are doing a lot of talking. If you are doing a video like our example invest in a good shotgun mic for your video camera. You’ll be amazed at the difference.
Tip 2: Use a tripod
Yes the Blair Witch Project was a hugely popular movie, mostly because it broke all the rules of Video Production, but for your product videos you need to use a tripod so you eliminate any camera shake. Think about driving down a bumpy road and how hard it is to focus your eyes, do you want to take potential buyers on a bumpy road? Tripods can be purchased for a very small amount of money, and keeping your camera still will enhance your videos a lot and add a professional look to them as well.
Tip 3: Lighting adds depth to your video
When setting up your “studio” it is important to have plenty of light. In case you didn’t know your camera’s lens is not as sensitive to light as your eyes are, so what looks bright to you can look dim to your camera.
You’ll want to use the “Standard 3-Point Lighting Technique“. Your main light or Key light is off to either the left or the right of the subject. Then opposite that is the fill light to help eliminate any shadows. This will be a slightly softer light. Then the third light is your back light. This adds depth to your video and makes it more 3 dimensional.
Using these three video productions tips will help you make better videos.
Putting Your Videos On The Web
We always recommend to our clients to upload their videos to YouTube and then embed them in their website. I mean why wouldn’t you like to take advantage of the traffic your video could see by being on YouTube? Also YouTube’s servers will generally do a much better job at serving up your videos than your standard web hosting account will, so your videos have the potential of looking better and with less buffering. That is what we did for our example mentioned above.
Get your creative juices flowing. What kind of video would you want to watch to make you buy your products? Do you have the knowledge to shoot the videos yourself or will you need a video production company to help out? With either case make sure your videos will enhance your products and not take away from them. So get out there and shoot some videos, you’ll be amazed at the return on your investment.