Think Outside the Cart - Use Shoppable Video to Create Useful Content

This guest blog post comes from Mark Lippmann, Managing Partner at luxury nail polish retailer Deborah Lippmann. 

With 50% of commerce sites getting less than 15 seconds of attention and visitors abandoning pages after just 2 seconds, marketers have only moments to capture people’s attention. Our strategy? Rich, shoppable content – from branded imagery, fashion trend pages and buying guides, we build interactive and completely shoppable digital experiences that increase conversions and engagement.

But we’ve taken it a step further. Expert content is a high-impact way to offer value to our customers outside of the product. When done correctly, they’re naturally guided along the path to purchase. I had this in mind when redesigning our Product Listing Pages such as the “Cuticle Care” shoppable experience. Featuring beautiful imagery and a shoppable how-to video guide to beautiful hands and nails, the experience is built entirely with Zmags Creator and saw an incredible 491% increase in conversions compared to similar experiences. What makes this content so successful is that it goes beyond the simple, flat product grid that customers see in what I call legacy commerce sites.

The experience provides rich images and educational video about hand and skin care that we know is important to our customer. The content is closely connected to our products, but can also stand on its own, providing our visitors expert techniques that they can use on their own. The videos feature our founder, celebrity manicurist and beauty expert Deborah Lippmann, providing customers an authentic connection to our brand. While the experience places education in the forefront we have to make it simple for visitors to buy.

For us, this means the experience is completely shoppable. Every product featured in our videos can be added directly to the cart from a gallery below, without ever leaving the page. The instant a customer is inspired by the video, she can add the product to her cart all while staying in the experience. As marketers we try to inspire customers around our product. Once we have succeeded, we have to make it easy to purchase! A simple, integrated path to purchase from within the content is essential to the experience’s success. Valuable, education-first content is an incredible way to drive brand loyalty, conversions, time on site, and consumer engagement.