The Moving Photography Video Trend in E-Commerce
As desktop computers give way to mobile and tablet computing, processing power has increased exponentially. This increased computing power has enabled online video content websites like YouTube, Vimeo and Hulu to thrive. More recently, e-commerce has begun to embrace this technology with video product demonstrations becoming the new standard for online sales.
Why e-commerce is utilizing video
All e-commerce is dependent on search engine optimization. To be relevant as a competitor, the consumer has to be able to discover and find a company’s product through organic search. Since Google’s acquisition of YouTube, Google has been restructuring their search engine algorithms to reward sites that include video.
Video links are easily shared through social media and have an instructional quality that is a perceived value to the viewer – this is similar to the entertainment value of an infomercial. In other words, a viewer will watch it even if they are not committed to the purchase if it is entertaining because the human eye is compelled to watch moving images over still photographs.
Video product demonstrations, or moving photographs, increase customer loyalty and encourage trust in a brand. A short product clip has the ability to communicate a quality product and confirm that the product works as described. It helps alleviate the concern of purchasing online where there is an intangible relationship between the consumer and the product.
Embracing the technology
When Amazon.com decided to enter the fashion category with their own brand, myhabit.com, they took flash sales to the next level by pioneering the moving photography trend in e-commerce. Competitors Gilt, Hautelook, and Ideeli were selling fashion apparel with still photos of models wearing the items and utilized the standard vantages of fashion; front, back, side, and detail shots. Alternatively, Myhabit.com incorporates a short video clip of the model walking towards the camera and slowly twirling to the back wearing the product. This allows the viewer to see how a product moves and takes a lot of the mystery out of shopping for apparel online. Saks Fifth Avenue has revamped their e-commerce website in a similar manner; their product pages show a short 360 degree view of the products as well as including the still images for those who prefer still image viewing.
Myhabit product page with moving photography video
Saks Fifth Avenue product page with moving photography video
How we are riding the trend
At The Kitchen Collaborative, we have recently made moving photography video product demonstrations a big part of our in-house services with a fully equipped HD production studio, where we create video demonstrations for a wide scale of products. Most recently, we completed a large quantity of moving photography videos for home product manufacturer Simple Human. A sneak peek of the videos is available on our website case study; the full set of videos will launch on Simple Human’s new website (coming soon!).
Storyboard for Simple Human moving photography video