#74 How to Increase Conversion Rates Using Embedded Videos - Without Slowing Down Your Website

Video marketing is one of the most powerful tools out there. But this episode is not going to be about brand awareness and reach. Our guest is more interested in hard conversion and revenue.

Claudiu Cioba is the Founder and CEO of VideoWise, a video shopping app on Shopify that helps brands sell more through the power of video. Claudiu describes VideoWise as more of a video shopping product, not a marketing product. Video marketing, Claudiu explains, is more about increasing or reaching your audience, video shopping is about generating revenue.

For this episode of The Ecom Show, Claudiu joins our podcast host and CEO Daniel Budai to discuss:

✔️ How Claudiu Became a Founder and the Ethos Behind VideoWise

✔️ How VideoWise Increases Conversion Rates

✔️ Honest Attribution Models and Tracking Conversion

How Claudiu Became a Founder and the Ethos Behind VideoWise

Claudiu’s journey into marketing began when he was 20 years old. He left his hometown, Transylvania, to pursue a design internship in New York. Starting from branding and web design, ecommerce companies did not yet have terms such as ‘user experience' or ‘user interface design’.

Claudiu started with HTML and CSS and grew from there, taking every opportunity to work with different startups and companies all over the world. Usually, Claudiu was hired for one particular project, designing or redesigning a single product for conversion, so he never stayed at one company for longer than three years.

When Claudiu was offered a full-time position as a human interface designer at Apple, he politely declined,

“I really preferred my freedom, I was traveling a lot over the past six years. And I prefer that Nomad sort of lifestyle, where you can work from anywhere, enjoy life to its fullest.”

Claudiu brought his love of freedom into VideoWise. With over a decade of design experience, Claudiu founded a company that truly values the work/life balance of its employees. They’re a fully remote company, offer unlimited mental health days, and are very generous with vacations.

That said, the actual product that is VideoWise is somewhat different to how it was in its early days. Its first name was actually ‘V Star’, because of its direct relation to video reviews. The idea first came to Claudiu when he was heading over to YouTube to watch a video review of a product he was interested in. Wait a minute,

“Why isn’t anyone using all this content?”

Businesses should be using this social proof, right? Once V Star was born, it wasn’t long before it evolved into VideoWise. ‘Video’ to make it crystal clear that the company deals with video, ‘Wise’ because they’re very proud of their complex analytics.

VideoWise allows Shopify merchants to find video reviews for all their products, track new videos about their brand, automate video embedding on all product pages, and offer in-video purchases.

How VideoWise Increases Conversion

VideoWise is not the type of company that sells what Claudiu describes as ‘hope conversion’.

“We take a lot of pride in showing real and true ROI for companies only when videos actually sell.”

VideoWise cares about the entire shopper journey. From the moment they’re a visitor when they watch the video and show true engagement, the add to cart, and the moment of real conversion.

VideoWise allows ecommerce owners to import product videos across platforms, from YouTube to TikTok to Instagram, and manage them all in one place. From there VideoWise turns these into shoppable videos. This allows the customer to purchase directly inside the video.

With strict adherence to YouTube terms and conditions and Google’s privacy policy, VideoWise eliminates the risk of copyright infringement. The app is deeply integrated into Shopify and its checkout process, and every video player and widget is customizable according to brand design.

As for PageSpeed? VideoWise takes every precaution to ensure that their videos do not slow down your website. Rather than bluntly add a video to a page, they use ‘lite video embedding’. Bluntly adding a video, Claudiu explains, is one of the worst things one can do for PageSpeed. The video will load with the page and revert to autoplay. Instead, VideoWise embeds a thumbnail, compresses the image, and compresses the video itself. As the video doesn’t load when your page loads, your site continues to load quickly. Only when a user clicks on a video does the player open into a full-screen immersive experience.

“Once you put those videos to work, they’re just going to work for you while you sleep.”

Attribution Models and Tracking Conversion

Claudiu is very transparent about attribution and ROI. VideoWise has two attribution models for tracking points of conversion, stemming from:

1. Influence orders
2. Direct orders 

For influence orders, VideoWise tracks what orders are being made after a shopper engages with the video content in the same browser session. If a shopper watches the video then immediately buys the product, their purchase is defined as an influence order.

VideoWise considers video engagement to be at least 5 seconds of watch time. If a shopper doesn’t watch at least 5 seconds of the video, VideoWise doesn’t consider that to be engagement and doesn’t track it in attribution.

Direct orders, or direct attribution, occur when a customer makes an order inside the video. That's what's so important about shoppable videos. Generally, VideoWise sees most direct orders coming from mobile with a 70% / 30% ratio on mobile vs desktop.

It’s safe to say that when it comes to conversion rates, Claudiu values honest data above all else.

“We’re honest because we see that these videos work.”

Visit VideoWise or follow Claudiu on LinkedIn and Twitter to find out more about boosting your revenue with video.

Follow Daniel Budai:

Daniel's LinkedIn

Daniel's Facebook

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