Jefri Yonata — March 23, 2017 
The growth of e-commerce in the past decade is astounding. eMarketer expects retail e-commerce sales will increase to $ 4.058 trillion in 2020. The rapid growth of the e-commerce world has led to an increase in the demand for product explainer videos.
Product explainer videos used to be a “nice-thing-to-have” in your website/online store a few years ago, but they have made it clear that they are here to stay now.
That is because explainer videos help e-commerce businesses reach their customers in a more efficient way.
Explainer videos focus on product and service.
Unlike copywriting, explainer videos focus on the product you’re selling. Copywriting, on the other hand, requires a few paragraphs to build the right momentum for pitching your product.
With that said, the core element that makes an explainer video great is the script. To write a compelling script for your explainer video, you need to pay attention to these 6 details:
- Diction : Choose words that can be visualized easily.
- Pronunciation : Avoid using words that are hard to pronounce or comprehend.
- Humor : An element of laughter is effective in keeping your viewers’ attention.
- Tone : Make sentences sound the way you speak in an actual conversation.
- Content : Include enough content to help viewers understand your product better.
- Perspective : Make viewers feel involved in the video (e.g: use “you” instead of “people”).
You can read more about proven tips that we have used in making thousands of explainer video scripts here.
Explainer videos make people stay longer in your online store.
A custom-tailored product video increases the average time-on-page rate as it encourages your viewers to keep watching. That builds your website’s credibility in the eyes of search engines.
But just a better on-page time doesn’t mean better conversion.
An explainer video needs to make use of the time your viewers spend watching it. That is why you need to properly prepare the script, like we’ve talked about in the header above.
Another thing that you should know about an explainer video is that the longer it is, the more viewers who quit watching it.
Our latest study on the connection between an explainer video’s duration and viewer retention rate shows that on average, explainer videos that are ≤ 60 seconds retain the most attention at 77%.
The retained attention percentage decreases as videos grow longer in duration. Past the two-minute mark, explainer videos only get watched 47% of their total duration.
This shows that an explainer video, while it encourages visitors to stay on your website longer, still has limitations in its viable length before it loses viewers’ attention completely.
Assuming you write a great script with everything you need to tell about your product, your explainer video will retain visitors’ attention for just the right amount of time and deliver a better sales pitch.
In fact, shoppers who watch an explainer video before making a purchase are 1.81 times more likely to complete their purchase.
Explainer videos help your visitors know your product better.
As the name suggests, an explainer video is a video that describe the details of a product that your visitors will not understand quickly if the details are written or shown using a thumbnail.
Online shopping experiences are great for most of your audience. They browse the Internet for trusted websites that sell the product they want, they pay for it, and they wait comfortably for it to arrive at their doorsteps.
The only thing lacking here is that they don’t get to touch and feel the stuff they are about to buy online to make sure it’s to their liking.
This is where a product explainer video steps in as the matchmaker between a customer and your product.
Sure, product photos and descriptions provide greater detail about the product, but they offer a two-dimensional experience.
You shouldn’t make it hard for your customers to experience the product they want to buy. It’s their decision, but you get to shape the final outcome of that decision.
If your customer makes a purchase after watching an explainer video, that means your explainer video has appealed to the right target audience and has presented your product to meet their criteria.
The question is: How do you achieve that?
Well, after years of knee-deep adventures in producing explainer video. I’ve learned a couple of important crucial factors that must be addressed for an explainer video to qualify as “awesome.”
Problems: What pain point does your product solve?
Audience: With that problem in mind, who will find your product useful?
Selling points: What makes your solution to that problem better than other products that solve the same problem?
Duration: How long do you need to tell all of this? If it’s more than 2 minutes, cut it down to 1.
I’ve written in greater detail about these essential factors for writing a great explainer video script. Read more about them here.
Takeaway
Every e-commerce company needs an explainer video, for several reasons. Mainly, though, it’s because explainer videos keep visitors’ attention for longer, while at the same time delivering more information about your products.
Ultimately, an explainer video for an e-commerce business helps your visitors know your product better while compelling them to make a purchase.
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