How product videos help beauty brands and retailers grow online sales

Shopping for beauty products online is a social experience. Consumers are discovering new beauty brands on Instagram, getting a scoop on which novelties work from YouTube and turning to the community for recommendations. In this post, we talk about the role of beauty videos in the online shopping journey and how videos can drive conversions and engagement on e-commerce sites selling cosmetics.

How consumers shop online for beauty products

About 60% of female shoppers in the US and Canada buy beauty and personal care products online regularly. 14% of UK shoppers shop for beauty products online. It is estimated that online beauty sales in the US account for about $3 billion, or 5% of the $60 billion beauty market. Majority of consumers prefer third-party retailers over brand sites when it comes to shopping for beauty and cosmetics.

So, how do product videos fit into this equation?

For many shoppers purchasing beauty and cosmetics nowadays starts with watching beauty product videos on YouTube. 41% of female UK shoppers watch online beauty videos on YouTube, looking for ideas and tutorials on how to perfect their makeup skills or improve their skincare regimen. 64% of consumers watch videos to keep up with the beauty trends. 61% watch beauty channels regularly.

This contributes to the pool of 700 million video views that beauty videos receive worldwide every month. In 2015, YouTube had a total of 45.3 billion video views for over 1.8 million beauty videos published on the platform.

YouTube plays a big role in beauty-related purchases

So, what are consumers watching? According to 2015 study by Pixability:

• YouTube audience is mostly interested in videos about makeup (39%), hair (34%), perfume (14%) and nails (2%).
• Some of the most popular categories of beauty videos on YouTube include tutorials (45%), commercials (20%), routine videos (7%), news (6%), product demos (5%) and look videos (5%).
• Tutorial videos earn higher audience engagement and more pageviews than other videos. Most popular subcategories include full-face makeup (45%), hair (24%), eye makeup (15%), body makeup (7%), lip makeup (5%), skincare (2%) and nail (2%) how-to videos.

• User-generated videos represent 95.4% of the beauty-related content on YouTube while beauty brands own 4.6% of beauty videos.
• There are over 180,000 content creators publishing UGC beauty content and 215 brands, sharing over 123 million channel subscriptions.
• Videos about hair tips and products produced by brands are the only category on YouTube which receives more audience engagement than UGC beauty videos.
• Perfume videos have the highest average views per video (50,000 views) compared to other categories such as skincare (25,000 views) and makeup (40,000 views).
• 55% of YouTube beauty video views occur on mobile.

Beauty vloggers own 65% of first-page video results for brand search terms. Mentions of brand names in beauty videos on YouTube have increased 53% between 2014 and 2015. This is true for well-known global brands such as Maybelline, L’Oreal, Dove and Cover Girl, as well as newer brands such as NYX, Too Faced, Benefit and Urban Decay, who can attribute much of their growth to the mentions in beauty product videos on YouTube made by vloggers. This speaks of the power of YouTube content creators to influence what beauty products consumers buy and value.

What does the popularity of beauty videos mean for e-commerce?

The abundance of beauty videos on YouTube presents a lucrative opportunity for brands and retailers to enhance their e-commerce experience with engaging video content. Aside from creating their own product videos, online retailers and brands can curate YouTube videos that beauty shoppers already love and bring this content closer to shoppers in the defining moments in the online shopping journey.

Consider this:

• YouTube videos influence buying decisions of 53% of shoppers in the US.
• 66% of beauty shoppers agree that YouTube videos help them visualize how products work in real life and are an excellent source of information.

It makes sense to create a bridge between the content and commerce by re-sharing YouTube videos on e-commerce product pages. This makes online shopping more convenient and engaging for consumers.

The benefits of featuring beauty videos on e-commerce sites include:

• Showcasing product performance in a dynamic, non-flat format
• Grabbing shoppers’ attention and motivating them to engage more with product pages
• Building awareness for the brand and the uniqueness of its products
• Giving shoppers a better understanding of the product so as to avoid returns
• Making it easier for shoppers to decide to buy.

Final thoughts

Innovation in selling beauty products online should start from the basics, and a video is a good place to start. Curating product videos directly on product pages enhances customer experience and makes online shopping for beauty products that much more convenient.

YouTube beauty ecosystem evolves rapidly and the quality, variety and quantity of beauty product videos produced by vloggers as well as brands is constantly improving. E-commerce businesses that use the power videos to help beauty shoppers will see massive improvements in engagement and conversion rates.

Originally published on Goodvidio Blog.