How to Tell If Your Ecommerce Video Is Driving ROI

It’s no longer just the early adopters who are deploying eCommerce video on product pages. In fact, eMarketer reports that 73% of retailers have video on product pages this year, up from 55% in 2010. eCommerce video is no longer in experimental mode. It has become a mainstream tool for improving the online shopping experience and increasing conversion.

In order to ensure that video is delivering the expected results, monitoring the right metrics is essential. Since many video platforms are designed more for advertising than for eCommerce, I’ve laid out suggested key metrics. Proving ROI can be remarkably simple if you stick to these metrics and always ask how your efforts are impacting customer experience and sales. The metrics to focus on are divided into two groups: viewing metrics and conversion metrics.

Viewing Metrics: Impressions, Video Views and View Rate

Although these metrics don’t directly impact sales, they tell you how many customers see your videos and provide insight into the effectiveness of your video merchandising.

An Impression is simply a video player being served to a user on a page. Think of an impression as the opportunity to view a video. For most retailers, impressions equal pageviews.

A Video View occurs when a customer watches a video. A view may be counted even if only a portion of the video is watched. Different video platforms may have different definitions of a Video View. Some may log a Video View upon a click of the Play button, others only after a given amount of the video has actually played. For a retailer, the key question is whether enough of the video was viewed to potentially influence purchase.

View Rate is the percentage of users who choose to view video. Mathematically, it’s views divided by impressions. View Rate tells you how effective your video merchandising is in terms of your video placement, the attractiveness of your preview images, the influence of calls to action, and other elements that lead a consumer to click “Play.”

Conversion Metrics: Add to Cart, Checkout , and A/B Testing

Online retailers are familiar with these metrics from analytics providers like Omniture and Coremetrics. With video, you can gain insight by focusing on the difference in behavior between shoppers who view video and shoppers who do not. Many online video platforms are designed more for advertising than for eCommerce, so make sure you have a plan in place to measure conversion data. This could include a video platform that integrates with your shopping cart, or it could include measuring conversion separately with your analytics provider.

Add to Cart

The difference in Add to Cart between video viewers and video non-viewers provides valuable insight at the most basic level: who chooses to buy and who does not. When video appears on a product page, you’ll want to understand the impact it has on Add to Cart rate. To do that, measure the percentage of video viewers who add to cart and compare it to the percentage of non-video viewers who add to cart. This will indicate the impact video views have on your Add to Cart rate.

Checkout

Checkout allows you to calculate the exact contribution video makes to your bottom line. Additionally, you can compare Add to Cart and Checkout metrics to understand video’s impact on cart abandons. By giving shoppers a clearer image of what they’re purchasing, video can often lower cart abandon rates.

A/B Testing

The previous metrics are persuasive, but may fall short of directly proving that video caused a product purchase. In order to drill down and provide proof on the most rigorous level, you may want to implement A/B testing.

In a typical A/B test you’ll change one variable, measure the result, and compare it to a baseline control group. In this case you’d present video to a percentage of your visitors and compare the conversion rates for that group to a control group which is served the same pages, but without video. Since only one variable is changed, any differences in behavior or conversion are probably due to that variable. Seasonality, changing promotions, and other factors become non-issues since they influence both groups equally. Your video platform may offer A/B test functionality. If not, your Web analytics package can be configured to perform the test.

Summing it Up

Online retailers are data-driven, and eCommerce video is managed with metrics just like any other site initiative. The needed metrics aren’t different from traditional eCommerce metrics; however, your video platform or eCommerce analytics platform must be configured to capture the data you need. With that data, you will know the impact of your video program and be in a position to optimize on an ongoing basis as the industry rapidly matures.

Craig Wax is CEO of video solutions platform Invodo.