What’s Happening With Video In The US
Video is the number 1 source of information for 66% of people in the United States. Whether that informative video is a Youtube Clip, a Netflix documentary, or some kind of content from Instagram/TikTok, the US population is consuming video content at an unprecedented rate. In fact, more and more video content is being watched now than ever before. In 2020, the average time spent per day with digital video by adults was 103 minutes.
Here are some additional & amazing stats:
- 72% of customers said they would rather learn about a product or service by way of video.
- 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video
- By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017
How Businesses Are Responding
With US consumers spending more time than ever watching videos, companies have responded. As of 2019, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool – up 63% over the last 3 years. Reason being, businesses need to engage consumers & meet them where they are spending their time. In the retail industry, brands have done exactly that. They have doubled down on video advertising, started to run live streams from their physical stores, and fully added video tools like FaceTime & Zoom into their marketing strategies.
The Impact of Video on Day-to-Day Operations for Retailers
With video consumption showing no signs of slowing down, we can expect that people will not only continue to communicate with their peers via video, they will increase their communication with businesses via video as well. To be very clear, we’re not just talking about an uptick of people viewing & commenting on a brand’s content on Instagram or Facebook. We’re talking about an uptick of people video calling with brands & stores directly. In fact, as shared above, this is already happening! In the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, countless retailers started adopting technologies like FaceTime & Zoom to communicate with customers. Retailers leveraged these tools everyday to welcome shoppers into their stores. However, retailers found that FaceTime & Zoom did not fully contextualize or complete the video experience for the consumer. So what are retailers doing to address the limitations of FaceTime and Zoom? They are starting to add solutions like VISX DIRECT, which enhances the 1:1 video experience by integrating products for checkout. They are effectively changing the way they represent their stores & communicate with customers.
Let’s have a look at the evolution of retail clienteling over the past 50 years.
Retailers have received & made phone calls to customers for over 50 years. It goes without saying, but a standard phone call is how most people reach & engage with a physical store.
In the late 2000s, retailers & consumers started texting with one another. In the 2010s, retailers leveraged text to drive consumers to their websites.
In 2020, retailers adopted FaceTime & Zoom to welcome consumers into their stores. A traditional phone call no longer sufficed in many environments.
Present day, retailers are now using tools like VISX that fully contextualize the video experience. Consumers can now video call with a store & buy directly while in that video call.
Retailer & Shopper Communication in The 2020s
The jump from text to Facetime to VISX happened overnight. This rapid change happened due to the fact that retailers quickly needed to find new ways to engage with shoppers, and consumers were getting more and more comfortable with video. FaceTime & Zoom turned out to be incredibly helpful, but they did not complete the video experience. So retailers across the US started adding tools like VISX.
Looking forward to the upcoming years & the next decade, we believe that video calls between retailers & shoppers will start to replace traditional phone calls. Starting with luxury & high ticket item retail. Why is that? Well when a customer calls a store, they are typically seeking information on a particular item. The problem is – when they make that phone call, they can only hear the associate’s voice. The prospective customer is effectively blind. Now, say that customer makes a video call to the store. With a tool like VISX, that associate can answer that video call, walk the customer through the store, and immediately integrate items for the customer to buy. That experience makes a whole lot more sense than talking to someone with just audio. And with video being the number 1 source of information for 200 million people in the United States, it’s exciting to imagine what the future of retailer-shopper communication will look like.