Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.
Luxury stores go the extra mile to provide an effortless, concierge shopping experience. High-end boutiques may employ personal shoppers to help find items you love, tailors to make any necessary adjustments, and helpful sales associates to complete your purchase without ever asking you to wait in line. All of this assistance removes obstacles and makes the shopping experience easier.
Shoppable media helps recreate this experience online. Instead of personal shoppers, interactive ads use targeting and audience segmentation to deliver customized recommendations. Instead of sales associates who help you skip the line, shoppable technology reduces the steps required to place an order.
With shoppable media, you too can create an effortless customer journey for your ecommerce store visitors.
What is shoppable media?
Shoppable media uses embedded product links to connect featured content directly to an ecommerce opportunity, such as an ecommerce store, product page, or landing page. With shoppable media, consumers can access product information and even add items to a shopping cart by engaging directly with the ad content. Shoppable media can appear as featured website content, in display ads, on social media platforms, and on devices such as smart TVs.
Types of shoppable media
Shoppable media is most often visual content that showcases a brand’s products. These are some common types of shoppable media:
- Shoppable images. Shoppable images can be product or lifestyle photos with embedded ecommerce links. Users interact by clicking “Shop Now” or product tags that pop up when you tap or hover over the image.
- Shoppable recipes. Shoppable recipe content is connected to an online grocery store so users can add recipe ingredients to an online shopping cart simply by clicking a button within the recipe.
- Shoppable video. Shoppable video allows users to shop without clicking away from the content. These interactive videos can appear on social media platforms or websites.
- Shoppable TV. Shoppable TV ads allow viewers to browse and add items to a cart with just a few clicks of a remote control. This content requires a smart TV, which is why you’ll most likely see these ads distributed on streaming platforms.
How shoppable media can impact your ecommerce business
Shoppable media can call attention to your products and help drive sales. Consider other ways shoppable media content can support your business goals:
Drive conversions
Shoppable media can help ecommerce businesses drive sales by highlighting product appeal, increasing discoverability, and providing a direct path to purchase. Shoppable posts like stylish lifestyle images and sleek video ads are packed with storytelling potential. With shoppable content, brands can use compelling visual content to inspire shoppers while still clearly highlighting the product for sale.
A women’s outerwear company, for example, could share a video of a confident model walking down the street in a trendy outfit. The video allows users to see the way the clothes fit and imagine how they would style the piece. If the video is shoppable, clicking the content or featured call to action (CTA) would immediately direct the viewer to the jacket’s product page.
Streamline the customer journey
Shoppable media creates a streamlined customer journey all the way through to purchasing. Connecting marketing content directly to product pages reduces the number of clicks (or for shoppable TV content, the number of devices) required to make a purchase. This short, seamless customer journey enables impulse purchasing.
Interactive shoppable content makes it easier for users to access information about your products. Shoppable content improves cross-platform shopping experiences with faster load times and a more efficient buyer journey. With shoppable social media ads, for example, users can browse items and access product details without disrupting their browsing.
Sharing shoppable media on popular digital platforms can help ecommerce businesses reach customers during their daily browsing activities, enabling product discovery. Popular social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok support shoppable media.
Increase engagement
Creating shoppable content can increase customer engagement because embedded product links add an interactive element to your marketing and advertising content. Depending on the publishing platform, this content can add to metrics like time on page, watch time, and click rate.
For image posts, a dynamic shoppable experience encourages engagement on social platforms by providing information such as the price or product name when a customer taps or clicks.
When it comes to video platforms like YouTube, shoppable social videos can support a higher average watch time by offering viewers a way to shop without pausing or leaving the video.
Enhance data-driven marketing
Shoppable ads and posts are a valuable tool for data collection because publishers can track how many times customers view ads and interact with shoppable elements. Ecommerce businesses analyze this data to gain a deeper understanding of consumer behavior.
Reviewing ad performance helps ecommerce teams identify engaging content formats and popular products. These insights help ecommerce businesses make data-driven decisions and develop stronger future ad campaigns. In the case of shoppable TV ads, the ability to interact with streaming video also enables more accurate sales attribution data.
Examples of engaging shoppable media
Here’s how real Shopify merchants are using shoppable content on social media and ecommerce platforms:
Tortuga
The travel backpack brand Tortuga used user-generated content to build a shoppable video gallery on its website. This collection of organic, casual social media content offers social proof by demonstrating how real consumers travel with the brand’s products. Interacting with this content triggers a pop-up video player with an integrated checkout cart.
Immi Eats
The high-protein ramen brand Immi Eats used lifestyle imagery to add context to its products with this shoppable Instagram ad. The two models eating noodles show consumers how they would use this product, creating more emotional appeal than a static image of the product.
Clicking the “Shop Now” button at the bottom of the image opens a shoppable window without directing users out of the Instagram app. This shortens the buyer journey, removes friction, and makes shopping online easier.
Sigma Beauty
Sigma Beauty’s homepage includes a collection of high-quality shoppable images with product tags. Adding shoppable media makes it easier for customers to shop products, and the gallery provides inspiration, product education, and pricing information in one place.
Fly by Jing
Fly by Jing used a shoppable image to add a conversion opportunity to this content marketing page. Publishing recipe content helps Fly by Jing inspire and educate consumers. Adding an interactive product photo and Shop Now button to the recipes instructions allows this brand to reach engaged users at the moment when their interest is highest—if they’ve stayed on the page long enough to read the recipe steps, they’re probably interested in making the dish.
Shoppable media FAQ
What is shoppable media?
Shoppable media is a digital marketing or advertising format that enables viewers to directly purchase something from visual media. Customers can tap an image, select a pop-up, or use a clickable button to interact with ad content and access more product information. Popular media types include shoppable social media posts, display ads, recipes, and streaming TV advertisements. Shoppable media is a way to shorten the path to purchase and provide a seamless consumer shopping experience.
What are shoppable posts?
Shoppable posts may refer to interactive social commerce posts, blog posts, or other website features. Shoppable content is an interactive format that uses embedded links to connect ad content to ecommerce opportunities. Sharing shoppable content can promote product discoverability and offer users an easy shopping experience.
How do you create shoppable media?
Creating shoppable content involves picking a platform, uploading content, and building shoppable posts by integrating links and product information. Shoppable media tools include Instagram Shopping, YouTube Shopping, CommentSold, and Pinterest Buyable Pins.
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Credit: Original article published here.