Enrich online and in-app user experience and increase ROI through optimized video

Today's consumers are more eager than ever to participate in online digital experiences. For some consumers, the so-called online digital experience even means full-scale immersive online shopping, such as virtual makeup and try-on - Sephora, Tmall and British e-commerce ASOS provide this interactive experience. Other consumers are looking for ultra-personalized experiences, such as customizing furniture and using virtual reality to determine whether the sofa matches the home decoration. The American furniture chain Pottery Barn is very good at using cutting-edge technology to attract online consumers.

At the heart of all these new experiences is the visual element - high-quality video and image content is a necessary and economical way for brands to highlight their advantages and attract consumers as early as possible during the consumer's online shopping and product browsing process. A recent study by Intent Lab shows that 59% of consumers believe that visual information is more important than text information. Visual elements can evoke stronger emotional resonance, prompting consumers to pay attention to details and use personalized features to experience brand characteristics; they can see the "real thing" of the product without entering the store or even actually buying it. However, brands face a common challenge - how to provide a highly beautiful and visually pleasing digital experience while meeting consumer expectations for performance such as speed and reliability. High-quality videos and images are very important. If they are not optimized, it may result in poor visual effects on the page, ultimately affecting the user experience.

To provide consumers with an excellent visual experience when browsing and shopping online, brands can adopt a two-pronged strategy:

1. Use short videos as a powerful supplement to HD images

The rise of short videos has had a profound impact on the end-user experience, and brands that effectively use short videos are gaining tangible, quantifiable ROI from their respective websites and mobile apps. Whether it’s a 20-second product video showing a new feature or a two-minute news clip on a mobile app, brands will benefit greatly from more page views and pages per visit, longer page dwell time, and higher conversion rates.

Creating an immersive visual environment has become a new way for brands to interact with consumers. More importantly, for brands, it is no longer their peers who are competing for attention, but short video applications such as Douyin, Kuaishou and Miaopai that can quickly attract consumers' attention. The "2019 Short Video Content Marketing Trend White Paper" shows that the number of independent short video users in China has reached 508 million, accounting for 46% of the total number of domestic netizens, and the scale of the short video KOL marketing market exceeded the 1 billion mark in 2018. It can be seen that rich images and videos can help brands use new ideas to make their websites and applications equally attractive. Brands can also gain a deeper understanding of how the evolving digital experience continues to successfully attract and retain the most valuable consumers.

2. Optimize video content to create a smooth user experience

A 100 millisecond delay in loading time can reduce conversion rates by 7%, so brands must ensure that video quality is not compromised. While short videos of products can increase conversion rates, delivering high-quality and high-performance videos without sacrificing visual fidelity is complex and difficult to implement correctly. For many brands, web content and application management are not their core competencies. This means that these brands' teams spend most of their time on basic operational activities to maintain a normal digital experience rather than adjusting and optimizing.

Retailers and brands are beginning to realize that cloud architects and front-end web developers play as important a role as art directors and marketing managers in delivering a great brand experience. Website and application owners must build scalable system architectures, automatically optimize images and videos at the edge of the network, and deploy immersive online applications to promote and increase consumer engagement on digital platforms.

Leveraging cloud automation, brands can enable optimal video quality, resolution and format across devices and browsers. This is important because consumers often browse products on one device or method, but purchase them on another. In fact, 50% of consumers frequently browse on mobile devices, but only 20% complete purchases on mobile phones. This shows that the omnichannel shopping journey is complex, involving multiple devices, connectivity ranges, and offline and online communications that influence consumers' interactions with brands. Optimizing the quality and speed of each digital touchpoint can ensure a smooth and consistent user experience.

As a result, automated optimization can shorten image and video preparation time, reduce the cost and effort of creating and converting digital assets, and accelerate time to market. At the same time, storing and delivering these assets in the cloud can reduce storage costs, enabling brands to intelligently deliver appropriate assets to each end user using real user data. Publishing images and videos in the cloud also means that brands only need to store a single original asset, use strategies to generate derivative works that meet artistic effect requirements, and achieve standardization of website attributes.

As more consumers browse the web on mobile devices, brands must provide consumers with a rich, consistent shopping experience while reducing challenges such as video formats and sizes. Using cloud automation technology to optimize video and image content, brands can reduce the time required to manually convert and adjust file specifications, and focus on enhancing consumer engagement and ensuring the experience in the evolving digital space.