7 Ways to Increase eCommerce Conversion Rates with Videos and 3D Content

Videos and online 3D content are fast becoming the go to methods for selling more products in eCommerce channels. 

The reason this type of content increases eCommerce conversion rates is simple – customers want to see what they’re buying. Instead of visiting shops in person, getting advice from sales reps and making purchase decisions that way, web shoppers can get everything they need by watching product videos and interacting with 3D content online, which improves the customer experience.

Product videos, 3D models and augmented reality allow your customers to experience something intangible. It’s not possible to hold, manipulate or see products when shopping online, so digital media is the best way to help potential buyers make decisions. 

However, it can be hard to sum up an entire product in a short video. Implementing 3D and AR online isn’t always as easy as it sounds. But, content is the king, so if you follow a process, products will fly off your digital shelves.

Why You 3D and AR Models Increase eCommerce Conversion Rates

According to industry statistics, up to 85% of consumers rely on videos when they shop online, while 3D and augmented reality can increase conversions by up to 60%.

As the data shows, having product videos, 3D and AR product models in your online shop is an effective way to increase eCommerce conversion rates.

Step 1: Imagine Your Webshop as Your Digital Storefront

Searchmetrics, a popular enterprise eCommerce SEO software provider, put together an excellent article about The Digital Backstreet. The premise of the article is that you should be doing what you can to get out of the backstreet (the second page of the search results) onto the main street (page one). 

If we apply the same concept to product pages, you need to help your customers experience your product when they come into your online store. Customer experience is a competitive advantage in eCommerce, so you need to make your shop stand out.

Make 3D Models Your Digital Product Showcase

The best way to do this is by helping your customers interact with products in real time with 3D and AR online experiences. Think of this type of product content as your digital showroom.

According to our studies, 66% of adults say 3D and AR models would help them be confident in a purchase. If you aren’t using product models on your website, you’re leaving money on the table.

Shopify’s 2022 study states that customers who interact with online 3D content convert 94% more often than visitors who do not click on immersive assets.

Show Off Your Merchandise Online with 3D and AR

Physical stores use display models to show what they have in stock, so why should your online shop be any different? Online 3d content gives you a high-tech way to showcase your goods and grab your customer’s attention. If you’re unsure of how to create them, DemoUp Cliplister’s 3D and AR product models use existing product images to develop these models without the need for shipping a physical version of the product.

Step 2: Use Video to Demonstrate the Uses for Products

If you can show your audience all the wonderful ways your product solves their problems, they are several times more likely to buy. This is called problem selling and is a powerful way to convince people to buy your products.

The premise sounds simple but the issue is complex; how do you include products with multiple practical uses into one short product demonstration?

Luckily, you can follow a few guidelines to make the process easier. Here are some best practices for presenting your products in a way that boosts conversions instead of your bounce rate.

1. Demonstrate the Most Common Ways Customers Use the Product

By showing potential buyers the uses your existing customers find for your products, you help them picture what life would be like with your device in it. This cements your brand in your customers’ minds as the solution to their problems.

An excellent example of superb product demonstration content is the above video by Dyson showing all the features of its V8 vacuum cleaner. It shows the full range of benefits from its primary function as a vacuum to its secondary filtration, quick assembly and easy storage systems in action.

2. Break Product Videos Down into Simple Steps

When you consolidate your videos into small, bite-sized sections, they become easier to digest. The average human attention span decreased by 25% between 2000 and 2015 because of advances in technology. You must craft your videos well and keep them short to cut through the noise.

If we revisit the same Dyson V8 vacuum cleaner demo video, it’s just over a minute long. An ideal length for today’s consumers.

3. Make Sure the Steps Follow a Logical Sequence

When your video flows well, you are better able to maintain people’s attention. This is one of the best ways to consolidate your videos into short, concise information bombs users can easily retain.

Dyson does an excellent job of this. The V8 vacuum demonstration clip follows a logical usage flow and shows how simple cleaning your house with it can be. Most importantly, though, the video helps the person watching it imagine the product in their lives.

4. Show Other Benefits at the Beginning and End of a Video

Many products have additional features on top of their primary uses. If your products have easy stow capabilities or quick, snap-together assembly instructions, you can quickly demonstrate this at the start and finish of your videos.

In the Dyson example, the user takes the vacuum off a storage rack before turning it on and starting their chores. At the end of the video, you see that the device’s docking station doubles as a charging port.

By showing unique features before and after a product’s primary use, you both quickly acquire interest and leave a lasting impression.

5. Show Your Products in Their Best Light

Make sure your products are shown in the most attractive lighting possible and frame them so they are the primary focus of your videos. Our Dyson example video quickly cuts between camera angles to show specific features from other perspectives, but still ensures that the lighting is bright and the product is properly in focus.

Step 3: Syndicate Your Brand-Created Content

If you don’t have the time or know-how to make videos or models, there is an easier way. You can distribute your content via DemoUp Cliplister’s retailer network so you always have the most up-to-date,brand-created product videos on the product detail pages (PDPs) at your leading resale partners.

This achieves brand consistency by automatically embedding videos into retailer PDPs and removing time spent distributing them, provides you with ownership of your product content and eliminates outdated product videos with one click.

Get in touch today to see how easy it is to put your brand’s contet above the fold at your leading retailers. A specialist reviews all your product listings and sends the results directly to your email inbox.

Turn the Videos You Syndicate into Shareable Social Media Trailers

Video platforms like YouTube and TikTok can be a huge boon to your business. You can turn product demonstrations into short, informative videos that buyers can share with their friends or audiences. This gives your shop access to your customers’ online networks.

An added benefit of socially-shareable product videos is that they can be repurposed into paid advertisements on social media sites or web pages. Snipping clips from product demonstration videos and turning them into sponsored Instagram Stories or Twitter posts is another great way to increase your videos’ engagement metrics and overall impact.

Also, word of mouth is the most effective way to build trust in your brand. According to SEMRush, word-of-mouth marketing accounts for $6 trillion in annual sales worldwide, and users are five times more likely to buy when they hear about a product from a friend.

The best way to generate buzz via word of mouth in this day and age is through social media. Not only do you have access to people interested in your products, but their entire networks, too. 

According to Twitter, the average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) on the platform is around $6.50. Shares let you generate impressions for free, so a post shared 10,000 times is worth $65 using Twitter’s numbers.

If you can acquire this type of reach posting once per day, that’s $1,950 you save each month for your paid social media advertising budget.

Other benefits of word-of-mouth marketing include:

• Increased brand awareness.
• People tell four to six of their friends about a product.
• Users who share good product experiences are more likely to purchase again.
• People who hear about products from friends and family are 9x more likely to buy.

Knowing all this, it’s easy to see that by creating shareable video clips, you dramatically increase the ROI of your posts and the likelihood of your retailers making sales.

Step 4: Make Sure Your Product Videos Answer Questions Directly

Of course, product demonstrations aren’t the only type of content you can make a video with. We already covered how you can demonstrate solutions to prospective buyers’ problems, but what if they have other concerns? FAQ videos, tutorials and how-to guides are also great ways to answer people’s questions honestly and directly right from your PDPs.

FAQ Videos

FAQ videos are video recordings answering the most commonly asked questions by your customers. Here’s a step-by-step guide to including high-quality FAQ videos in your online shop.

1. Collect Your Pool Of Questions

There are a few ways to find the most pressing questions from your customers. You can view your products’ review pages to see what most people are asking, or better yet, go directly to the source and include a question box on your product pages. This will help you find what’s essential in the minds of your ideal buyers.

2. Find Answers from Existing Customers

There are loads of product review websites and forums where like-minded people meet up and chat. Going to these sources first may help you find creative ways people use your products to solve a problem that most of your potential buyers are asking about. Plus, it helps you understand the language and lingo of your target audience.

3. Come Up with Multiple Answers to the Same Questions

While you may know the answer to your customers’ questions, it can likely be articulated in several ways. We find it best to draft a few different versions of the same answer for your video script before you shoot so you can refine your presentation before you film.

4. Find an Ideal Filming Location

After you have your script or questions you want to answer, it’s time to shoot a video. Ideally, you want a location that resonates with your audience. If you’re selling bicycle parts, you may want to film in a bike shop. If you run a fashion shop, you might want to film in front of a vanity. 

Even if you intend on using product content syndication services for your FAQ videos, the old retail adage still rings true in this context – location is everything. You should look for videos filmed in areas that make sense for your product.

5. Rehearse Your Script

After you find a location, it helps to do a few dry runs with the presenter before you shoot your video. This helps you avoid wasting time doing reshoots and multiple takes later. If you’re using syndicated product content, you should look for videos that have well-practised, confident and articulate presenters who aren’t stumbling over their words.

6. Film Your Answers

If you’re filming videos yourself, shoot a couple of takes so you have a few options to take to the editing room. Remember that you can splice videos together with the best clips and sections from each take.

It may be the case that the most direct way to answer a question is by demonstrating it on a product. See our section on product demos for more information on creating them, along with an example of some ideal content.

7. Develop Your Final Cut

Once you film your video, you need to edit it into a smooth, well-polished and professional-looking product. This can take some time but is well worth it in the end so users stick around and watch your videos instead of ignoring them or hitting the back button.

If you use a product content syndication service, you likely have a few options at your disposal. Before you select one, consider the aesthetics of your shop and website, and the disposition of your audience so you both catch their attention and put the answer in a language your buyers understand.

Tutorials

Tutorials are similar to product demonstrations in that they explain to customers exactly how something works. However, tutorials may be more specific than just a basic example of how the product works. Many tutorials are about how to use a product for a certain purpose, rather than a general overview of its functions.

How-To Guides

Again, while similar to tutorials, how-to guides are even more specific. A how-to guide usually includes step-by-step instructions on how to do a certain task using a particular product. These in-depth breakdowns should be easy to understand and include both audio and visual instructions.

FAQ, Tutorial and How-To Video Summary

While all these video styles are useful, think about the potential return on your production and hosting costs. If you have a more limited budget, it may not be worth having these extra content types for all of your products. It could make more sense for your business to only have FAQs, tutorials and how-to videos for high-volume, high-margin products or flagship models.

Step 5: Optimise Video and Model Placements on Your Product Pages

It does no good to have an excellent video if nobody can see it. In most cases, we find it’s best to place product videos above the fold in a prominent area of the page that catches people’s attention. 

Above the fold means anything visible on your PDPs before the user scrolls down. Ideally, you want videos and other eye-catching content to be the first thing people see so they spend more time on your pages and want to learn more about your product.

For sporting goods retailers, this might mean placing videos as one of the first things people see; for electronic retailers, it may be better to place AR models as part of the product image list. Ultimately, you won’t know what works best for your product, website or brand until you start experimenting with various placements.

Find Out What the Best Placement is for Your Business

The only way to know for sure what the best placement is for your product description videos and 3D models is by testing it out yourself. Many A/B testing platforms let you create multiple versions of your product description pages so you can see how different layouts perform.

If you don’t want to invest in software, you can also look to other big fish in your industry to see how they design their sites and what their layouts are like. If most of the heavyweights in your industry are doing something similar, it’s likely the optimal approach.

Added Benefits of A/B Testing

One of the biggest arguments in favour of investing in A/B testing software is that it can help you find creative ways to stand out from your competition. If most of the businesses in your industry use the same formula and you find a more effective, different way to display your product demonstration videos and 3D/AR models, you can get a quick leg up on your rivals.

Consider Heat Mapping

Heat mapping is a third, highly effective way to optimise the location of your product videos and 3D content online. Heat maps are plots of the most commonly clicked on areas of your website, which create visual representations of how visitors interact with various elements on each page.

Optimising the location of videos on your product pages via heat mapping is one of the most effective ways to make sure potential customers see your content because the data explains how visitors view your website. Heat maps also show you whether your customers are seeing individual parts of your product description pages, like your 3D product videos or AR product experiences.

If you still struggle with engagement after using heat maps, you may want to consider the content of the videos or models themselves. Even if your video is perfectly placed, it won’t hold the attention of your prospective buyers very long if it’s boring or visually unappealing.

You can check out some of the leading heat mapping software programs if this is an area you want to explore.

Consider Your Web Traffic and Test Sample Sizes

One of the drawbacks of heat mapping is that you need an appropriate sample size of visitors and clicks before you can make any meaningful decisions. While this isn’t an issue for more established sites with large amounts of traffic flowing to them, it can be a challenge for smaller web shops that need all the conversions they can get.

If you’re launching a new eCommerce site or struggling with traffic, you may need to explore ways to generate more organic traffic or consider investing more in paid advertising campaigns. Once you have the traffic you can acquire the necessary data to make conclusions.

Video and 3D and AR Model Placement Summary

Asset placement is one of the most important aspects of designing a product page. If you nail this, your customers will be more likely to add products to their cart and complete a conversion. If you don’t, your bounce rate, time on page, and other important metrics will suffer.

Step 6: Keep Tabs On Your Content

One of the biggest challenges in the eCommerce industry is file management. Major retailers like OTTO, MediaMarkt and Conrad have millions of product images and videos on their servers. This makes it hard for employees to know which assets are current, which images are outdated and what is related to products that are no longer available.

Most of the world’s leading retailers use digital asset management (DAM) systems to combat this problem. A DAM system is a cloud-based service that facilitates the storage, organisation and retrieval of digital content.

Benefits of Using a DAM Solution

Consider DAM systems like online filing cabinets. Users place all of the company’s files into the platform that the wider company can access. This saves everyone time and energy searching for the correct assets.

One of the more practical benefits of DAM software is that you no longer need to manually share files. You no longer need to share digital media using email. Anyone with login credentials can access, edit, update and store changes to all of the videos, images and models in the system.

High-quality DAM software also helps you save money. Images and videos are huge memory hogs, so you need to save space where you can. Many DAM systems on the market today include things like an image cdn to compress files to help you save on server costs.

DemoUp Cliplister’s digital asset management software combines file management with image optimisation, so you can compress your content and save up to 60% in file sizes without sacrificing visual quality.

All files you upload to the DAM system are automatically pushed to the relevant PDPs. This means that all your changes get published instantly, site-wide, significantly reducing the resources and manpower required to manage product content.

Step 7: Update Your Content Over Time

As you update your products, you also need to update your videos, online 3D content and augmented reality models. While small, incremental improvements may not warrant a complete revamp of your original assets, big changes or complete redesigns mean you need to show your customers all the new features.

Minor Updates

If your new product contains minor updates, consider making shorter, secondary videos that highlight the new feature. This could be a short, five-to-ten second video demonstrating its function, or a simple 3D model of the improved design added to the image wheel.

Many big manufacturers even forgo creating new images for minor product updates. Some companies routinely use older images if the updates are intangible or internal. If Samsung produces a new phone with updated internals, but the dimensions, colour and overall features are the same as before, they will likely continue using the same image.

Major Reworks

On the other hand, completely new iterations of your product should be treated as an entirely new concept. Therefore, we recommend an entirely new video and updated models of your merchandise to maximise the potential for existing customers to buy the new product.

In other words, if people can’t experience your product’s massive update, you lose out on the potential for repeat business and your relaunch may fall flat of expectations.

Summary

Videos, online 3D content and augmented reality provide you with the best opportunity to help your online customers experience your products. Bite-sized, informative product demonstration videos are perfect for replacing their ability to see and touch when buying something in-store.

To recap, here’s how you can dramatically increase your bottom line with 3D and AR product models:

1. Imagine your webshop as your digital storefront.
2. Use videos and models that demonstrate the functionality of your products.
3. Consider using a product content syndication service.
4. Make sure your product videos and PDPs answer questions directly.
5. Optimise for the placement of videos and models on your PDPs.
6. Implement a central file management system (DAM).
7. Update videos and models with the most up-to-date information.

Plus, videos are great for sharing. Social media users who enjoy your products are very likely to share this fact with their friends, multiplying your reach exponentially.

Also, when you implement a DAM solution alongside your new product videos and models, you save time, money and effort. And, you always get the most up-to-date information out to your customers and no longer need to worry about manually sharing assets with your retailers.

With all of these benefits, it’s easy to see why so many brands started using video as a way to sell goods online. 

Follow these steps, and you will see a large boost in conversions. Contact us to see how DemoUp Cliplister’s full range of services can help you increase your add-to-cart conversion rate, improve relationships between manufacturers and retailers and boost your bottom line.

For more on product content syndication, digital asset management, and product content creation, visit our blog.

For a list of DemoUp Cliplister software and services, head over to the homepage.