Online retailers are increasingly looking for ways to enhance the online shopping experience in order to boost sales and improve loyalty. Video can be one answer to the challenge of keeping shoppers on retailers’ web sites longer.
For Living Direct, video increased shoppers’ time spent on pages by nearly 9%, the company reported. To launch this initiative on its network of sites, which includes LivingDirect.com and IceMakerDirect.com., Living Direct partnered with e-Commerce video provider Invodo.
Additionally, the retailer found that video can be beneficial across various media; for example, on a product page video can help drive conversion. In a “Buyer’s Guide” or “Learning Center,” video can enhance engagement and teach consumers how to shop a category, including what features to select and how to choose between them.
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Deeper Dive Into The Data
In addition to helping empower customers with more information, Living Direct wanted to learn more about how videos affect customer behavior, so the company performed a deeper analysis of the data, evaluating the impact by product, as well as other site metrics.
The analysis uncovered a strong positive relationship between product complexity and conversion impact. The more complex products saw twice the conversion lift compared to the less complex products. The data collected data from this type of analysis can identify which product categories receive the highest conversion lift from video, and also illuminate other benefits such as increased user engagement.
Focus On Consumer Education
Living Direct discovered that video provides a more innovative approach to customer education, and it solves challenges associated with complex descriptions of some of the appliances and products that the retailer sells on its sites. Video allows shoppers to obtain a clearer grasp of a product’s functionality, beyond text descriptions and images.
Living Direct, Inc., an Internet 500 retailer, was founded in 1999 as Richlund Ventures in Austin, Texas. Since then, the company has become a multi-million dollar, top 500 e-Tailer. The company specializes in home appliances, outdoor patio furniture and other items for the home.
Focused on providing enhanced product information and context, Invodo produced custom video content hosted and streamed to Living Direct’s sites through Invodo’s player. The content is aimed at helping customers understand products and uses. For example, “Buyer’s Guide” pages, hosted on sites such as IceMakerDirect.com, are focused on helping consumers learn to shop unfamiliar categories more knowledgeably.
“Consumers are often unfamiliar with products like portable ice makers and require a good deal of information — often more than can be conveyed by text and product images alone,” said Drew Leakey, VP of Marketing & Business Development at Living Direct. “One of our main goals as a company has always been to understand and meet customers’ needs for information about their purchases. We determined that implementing video on our sites was an optimal way to provide the comprehensive information and guidance consumers require in order to shop our products online.”