Matt Babineau, vice president of product marketing, TVPage

In this day and age, merchants whose only focus is on providing a product catalog and a checkout cart will not survive. The consumer attention span is only 8.25 seconds and merchants are battling against everything from a phone ring to a competitor’s ad to engage them. If a customer lands on your website and is immediately met with lackluster product information, they are not going to stay. Conversely, if they arrive and are instantly entertained, you’ll have yourself a visitor who will continue to engage with your site for much longer.

Balancing act

Entertaining content grabs the attention of your visitors, but it won’t necessarily drive sales. In order to convert more visitors, you must find a balance between leveraging compelling content and helping customers down your purchase funnel. Consider this: A humorous “Top 10 List” may be engaging, but if it’s not giving your customers the knowledge they need to complete a purchase, you may be leaving money on the table.

This challenge of balancing enjoyable content and a product pitch has left merchants scratching their heads. Many have leaned too far one way or the other, but few have discovered how to leverage an optimal mix of both. In order to find that happy medium, merchants need to take a step back and observe the landscape that they are operating in.

Engaging video content, deployed across ecommerce websites, can help retailers navigate this tricky balancing act. The potential of video is built upon a variety of factors. Let’s break them down with some stats:

1. The internet is projected to be 80% video by 2018 – Video is a firmly ingrained in the future of internet retailing. If you’re not deploying any, you’re falling behind the multitude of other merchants who are adapting and engaging with consumers through video.
2. Video viewers retain 95% of a message, those who read text, only retain 10% – This ensures that you’re able to convey the product information needed to turn shoppers into buyers. Even if your text is somehow engaging (we’ll get to why it probably isn’t in a second), you’d have to leverage much more of it to get the same point across as you would with a video.
3. On average, users spend 88% more time on websites with video – Need any more proof that video is engaging? This data illustrates that video has the ability to capture user attention and keep them on site, right where you want them.

So what happens when you deploy video and strike that perfect balance? Studies have shown that video increases conversions by 80% or more.

Tipping point

While the potential that video can to offer online merchants is clear, the perceived time-intensive task of creating engaging video content can be a barrier to entry for many retailers. Another common misconception is that video production is inherently expensive, causing some businesses to shy away from it. Make no mistake, sometimes this can be the case. However, merchants new to video can get started simply by pulling out their smartphone and recording a basic product review.

Even lifestyle videos, that seem like such a daunting task to produce, can be completed on a budget using talent from a local college and rental equipment. If you’re willing to invest some time and effort, the basic video editing programs that come standard on many computers are more than capable of getting your video refined and ready for prime time.

Want an even easier route? Leverage content from your brands, influencers or community members. Combining all of those sources with your own video content will provide you with more than enough to deploy across your entire site.

Finding the perfect balance between engaging, entertaining content and a product pitch is tricky when using static images and text alone. Video consistently engages, informs and converts customers. By serving customers the content they desire, brands can build relationships that last.

TVPage describes itself as a video content management system that enables online retailers to source, publish and monetize online videos.