Updated: Feb 15, 2021
Shoppable videos are the most talked-about video format in 2021 digital marketing strategies. This format started to gain popularity as Instagram introduced shoppable images across the platform. This quickly evolved to include shoppable videos with associated shoppable products from the Facebook product catalogue. Most recently this includes livestream shopping which is currently being tested in the US market.
Outside of Instagram, brands are using interactive video platforms like Smartzer to create interactive and shoppable video experiences that can be shared across e-commerce, social platforms and forms of paid media. The interactivity occurs through a clickable overlay that can tag videos with additional information about available products. Smartzer’s platform has an overlay that offers multiple ways for the viewer to explore and shop products to maximize the value of this technology.
1. Tags on the video
The most widespread way of adding interaction is to make products on the video itself interactive and shoppable. This can be both in the form of invisible tags or visual hotspots that mark the clickable items. This provides an easy way for the viewer to simply click on anything that they have been interested in to immediately access more information. This form of interaction is particularly convenient for mobile users and mirrors the expected user behaviour driven by social media channels.
2. Shoppable Carousel
Another unique feature of Smartzer is a shoppable carousel alongside the video. This includes all the items that are featured throughout the video and can be either opened or closed. The viewer can click on anything in the carousel to activate a popup with more information. This is perfect for longer videos, or videos with lots of featured items providing quick and easy navigation.
Photo: Brown Thomas live event with Smartzer shoppable carousel
3. Shoppable Replay Screen
In addition to enabling the interactive overlay during video playback, the shoppable items can also be listed on the video replay screen as another way to shop the video once the video has ended. This provides a great alternative to viewers who prefer to finish watching the video and then explore the related shoppable items.
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- Jan 28, 2021
Updated: Feb 11, 2021
Video itself has come a long way from analog video in television systems, nowadays the quality of digital video and reach has surpassed that of analog video. People are walking around with mini-computers in their pockets that are able to connect to 5G networks reaching mind-boggling speeds that many find unobtainable in their home. With this in mind, it’s not only that video that has been changing but also how and where people are watching it.
Since 2005 interactive video has seen a vast growth in usage. On the face of it, this is due to more people having access to devices that enable them to interact with digital video and also over faster internet speeds that allow for more complex content to be streamed.
But what exactly is interactive video?
According to the Collins English Dictionary interactive video is defined as “a computer-optical disk system that displays still or moving video images as determined by a computer program and user needs”. In layman’s terms, interactive video is a type of digital video that supports user interaction.
Functionally, video interactivity can manifest itself in a few different ways. Videos that contain these interactive elements are easily defined as interactive. Here are some of the most popular ways in which brands and content creators are adding interactive functions to videos online:
Adding Hotspots: Probably the most widely used form of interactivity, adding clickable hotspots to a digital video often results in an action to be performed, for example activating a pop-up window within the video (Eg. JD Sports Christmas Campaign).
Branching: Video branching enables the user to click on various options while watching a video to determine which part of the video to watch next (Eg. Buzzfeed Parenting Challenge).
Involving Data Inputs: While viewing a video, an interactive layer might provide the users with the opportunity to input their own data in a form like structure.
Gamification: Through the usage of various UI components such as slider controls or steppers interactivity can be added to host game principles in an otherwise non-game environment.
Using Carousels: Interactive Carousels within the interactive video player are also often widely used to allow the user to interact with the featured elements while the video is playing.
Interested in creating an interactive video for your own use? Speak to us here.
- Jan 28, 2021
Due to the current COVID-19 crisis, for most businesses, online sales have been the lead source of revenue for the past months. To try and help, Smartzer offered up free access to the Smartzer platform to small businesses in need to help drive additional sales through digital channels.
As part of the initiative Smartzer started to collaborate with HANX.
About HANX:
Founded in 2017 by best friends, Dr. Sarah Welsh and Farah Kabir, HANX make sexual wellness products designed with people’s wellbeing in mind. Their latex condoms are vegan, ultra-thin, and clean scented and HANX lubricant is long-lasting, natural, and is compatible with condoms and sex toys. Even better, they’re free of unnecessary chemicals, so they’re kinder to your body and the planet.
The team at HANX & their Performance Marketing Team @ Regital had been using Social Media campaigns to help drive sales via their e-commerce site over the past couple of years and were looking for new ways of picking up sales over a particularly unpredictable period. To aid their efforts over lock-down in the UK, the team at Smartzer and HANX got together and ideated around how the technology could be best used to support their campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. After reviewing the available materials the Smartzer MINI Page came up trumps as a useful way of enhancing results by reducing bounce rates and offering users a fully custom mini landing page to browse each item in the collection.
Having run the campaign over a few months the team has been thrilled to report an increase in conversions on the product pages featured. Following the campaign, the teams are looking to further utilise Smartzer technology for interactive video in particular, once the appropriate content becomes available.
Until then, it has been a pleasure working with HANX and Regital on this project and we are excited to see what is still to come!