SmartMarket Media Blog

According to comScore, (as published by eMarketer) the number of online shoppers who watched retail videos grew 40% in a single year. One of the biggest problems online retailers have is what gets left in the shopping cart. How do you stop them from abandoning?

According to these statistics, education about the product using video is one of those steps. Even with tighter budgets in this sagging economy, SLI Systems found retailers reluctant to cut online video budgets. Only site search capability, e-mail marketing and search engine optimization & marketing were considered less dispensable than video. “Once retailers build up the video content on their sites, they will focus on turning their video assets into customer acquisition tools by pushing video to other sites, such as affiliates, social networks and video-sharing destinations,” says Mr. Grau. “Retailers will also place community elements around their videos to make it easy for consumers to upload them to social networks, blogs, bookmarking services or e-mails.”

While this sounds easy in practice, Mr. Grau points out one of the most difficult challenges retailers have. If a video is produced correctly it should be entertaining and informative enough to encourage sharing. However if it is a flat sales video about the product and its functions…chances are no one is going to post it on their Facebook page. What aspects of a product video would encourage you to share it with others? Is it a product or brand you already love or is it the video content done creatively that encourages you to share it? Share you thoughts & keep the conversation going below in the comments.

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