Home / What Is Visual Commerce And How Will It Benefit Your Brand?
Convenience, practicality and an easy shopping experience. These are the three main things that consumers are looking for when shopping online. With the evolution of mobile technology along with the tsunami of visual social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, consumers have come to expect and prefer engaging visual content when shopping online.
In the world of social commerce, virtual events and live streaming, retailers now have an endless list of opportunities to target and engage with their customers. In reaction to the wave of new ways that we can consume brands, there’s been a noticeable shift in how eCommerce stores use visual content and implement their marketing and eCommerce strategies.
It’s what the industry is calling visual commerce. Now, it may just sound like another marketing or eCommerce agency buzzword but it is far from it. The goal of visual commerce is simple: create compelling visual content to attract, influence, and convert consumers. The world may never shift back to the old brick-and-mortar ways, so the way you display and present your products online needs to be interesting and compelling.
Visual commerce is one tried and tested way to stand head and shoulders above your competition. But how can you get started and improve the user shopping experience through visual commerce? As a leading eCommerce agency, we know some great ways to get started.
Let’s start with the basics of visual commerce. This term can cover a number of media and creative formats. Brands can employ a mixture of pictures, videos, and virtual and augmented reality to showcase their products and consumers learn about and connect with their products and brand.
Visual commerce is a wide term that includes (but isn’t limited to):
Recent studies suggest that visuals are processed 60,000x faster than texts. This, combined with the ever-growing pressure to make shopping experiences unique and seamless, gives brands a great opportunity to enhance the visual aspects of their online store. Ecommerce site developers and eCommerce branding agencies around the world are urging retailers to build and incorporate compelling product photos, videos, and in-action shots for their product pages and overall eCommerce platforms.
In short, visual commerce uses creative visual mediums to guide consumers through their shopping experience, improve product insights and give users new platforms to shop.
In the last few years, the importance of visual commerce has been vastly accepted and the top brands within the retail industry have developed incredibly influential ways to include visual commerce at every stage of the shopper journey, from awareness right through to conversion.
We, as consumers, have reached an unparalleled new age of shopping. Our shopping journeys and habits differ in many ways from those of past generations. Through social media, hyper-targeted advertising and social commerce, we have more brands and more avenues to buy than ever before.
Through platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, we are able to get a glimpse of new products and trends without even having to go out of our way to shop. It is common for shoppers to research potential purchases with the help of YouTube product videos and we are even hounded with promotional offers on Snapchat and TikTok.
In this digital universe, we find ourselves in, the biggest obstacle retailers must overcome is that people can’t actually touch your products or see them up close and personal. This means that good brand reputation, trust and insightful product visuals are more important than ever.
The key to selling online is making your customers see who they’d be with your product in their life – and if the only thing your customer has to look at is a few pictures of the product on a block colour background then how can they visualise owning it for themselves?
Social media has had a big effect on marketing and eCommerce efforts around the world. As of September 2017, Instagram reported that the platform had more than 800 million monthly active users who post more than 95 million pictures and videos per day. It is important to know that these aren’t just organic users. Much of this content comes from brands and their customers posturing on their behalf.
“Instagram reports that 60% of people say they discover new products on the platform” – Facebook IQ
And Instagram is just one social media platform that influences our buying habits. Collectively, more than 2.7 billion people use Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter at least once a month. As a result, brands need to use these influential platforms to leverage their own visual content. This will allow them to discover and engage with compelling content from customers.
To keep up with the next wave of eCommerce trends, you need to have a visual commerce strategy that works for you. This is where an experienced web developer and eCommerce agency comes in.
As one of the most experienced eCommerce agencies in Cambridgeshire, we know how to give you a bespoke, user-focused website design solution and UI improvements. Our made-to-measure approach to E-commerce design means that you have full creative control; we want you to tell us how we can make the whole operational process work best for you.
To scale up your eCommerce processes and experiences with an experienced eCommerce growth agency, get in touch with us today.
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