Online Video Brings Holiday Cheer To Retailers By Boosting Sales

This holiday season, Liveclicker has been studying the impact of online video to the actual results of buying the product.  Taking analysis of over 7,500 videos across 25 e-commerce sites, Liveclicker discovered some interesting statistics involving the impact of the length of the video, and how many people immediately purchased the product after watching it.  Now, considering some of the parameters here, the absolute measure of online video's power is going to look small, because the only statistics that are available are immediate buying.  I doubt very few of us watch something and immediately say, "Sold!"  Whatever the case may be, the results are pretty impressive.

Liveclicker's Findings On How Online Video Drives Sales With Holiday Shoppers

Here's what they found:

• The average retailer saw the number of year-over-year video views increase by 61% in November 2011.
• As of Cyber Monday 2011, the average e-commerce video generated $2,026 in revenue.
• Each video generated an average of $3.74 per play.
• Sub-30 second videos demonstrated the highest conversion rates, with 4.54% of viewers making a purchase immediately after watching. Following the sub-30 second group, videos between 30 seconds and two minutes in length recorded an average of 3.58% of viewers converting. Videos longer than two minutes achieved an average conversion rate of 2.91%.

So here's how I'd like to break it down.  Each video generated an average of $2,026 in revenue, so keep in mind that many did more than that, and many did less (we also don't know what all the products are).  But this is analysis of 7,500 videos, so what we're looking at is $15,195,000 in sales directly related to online video, and that's just the impulse, gotta-have-it money.

Here's the Liveclicker take:

With the world's most extensive collection of retail video analytics, Liveclicker's clients are uniquely positioned to drive video commerce success," said Justin Foster, Liveclicker's Co-Founder and VP Market Development. "The growth of video viewing during the 2011 shopping season, coupled with more compelling revenue data supporting the business case of video in general, bode well for further adoption in 2012.

Yes, expect video to be in even more places, with more frequency, and generating more dollars than ever before next year.