At Studio, we know video commerce. We've built shoppable video for established brands like QVC and Alice + Olivia, and integrated our in-house products (LIVE and Refer) into brands like Fahlo and Comfrt. Over the past decade, we've seen video commerce go from an expensive, technically complex solution only available to those with extensive development teams, into an essential tool for brands of all sizes.
Successful video commerce requires more than just streaming capability - you need thoughtful analytics, community features, and seamless shopping experiences. We're seeing unprecedented demand for these solutions as brands recognize video's power to drive sales and supercharge brand growth.
Here's how to plan for it.
Why Video Commerce Matters
Video is everywhere. And growing. Brands who dispatch shoppable video are seeing higher click-through rates and improved conversions, but the benefits go beyond immediate cash gains. Video commerce sells product, yes, but it also creates authentic connections between brands and their communities by:
- Building trust: Video quite literally puts a face to your brand. Transparent and up-close views of product, customer testimonials and reviews, and behind-the-scenes content can build trust in current customers and create gravity to draw in new ones.
- Driving brand value: Regular video programming can become a cornerstone of your brand identity. You can educate your community on your UVP with special drops and influencer partnerships, detailed product tutorials, and live customer Q&A’s.
- Creating purchasing opportunities: Once customers understand the product (see above) you can make it simple for them to convert by offering seamless add-to-cart functionality, infusing videos with strategic upsells, and adding the ability to shop without clicking away.
Platform Strategy: Own Your Channel
While platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram offer tempting turnkey live-streaming solutions, they come with significant limitations. The stark reality is that you don't own your audience on these platforms - you're just renting their eyeballs.
Owned channels enable your brand to have:
- Direct relationships with your community. Third party platforms are notoriously fickle: changes to the algorithm or UX patterns can greatly alter viewer engagement (not to mention how you understand performance.) Without this social media “gatekeeping” you make and keep connections with your ideal customer.
- 360 perspective. When the middleman gets booted from the equation, you also get access to customer data and behavioral analytics that can inform email campaigns and re-engagement strategies.
- Controlled user experience. With owned platforms, you control all the levers of influence. Want to add a discount or a shop-while-you-watch feature? That’s all on you (and your product development team).
That said, social platforms shouldn't be ignored - they play a crucial role in content distribution. The key is using them strategically to drive awareness and direct traffic to your owned channels, where you can optimize for conversion and community building.
The Short-Form Revolution
Even with TikTok's rocky month, short-form video dominates engagement across platforms. It’s the top leveraged media format in marketers’ content strategies. And for good reason:
TikTok
- Estimated to have roughly 692 million global monthly active users last year, according to eMarketer. (Future ban or no, TikTok’s hold is strong.)
- TikTok has added "Shop Now" buttons so creators can add shopping links to their videos, making it easy for viewers to purchase featured items
Instagram Reels
- As of 2025, more than 2 billion people interact with Reels every month, and they receive 22% more interaction than standard video posts.
- With Instagram's "Shop Now" Feature brands can tag products in their posts and stories.
YouTube Shorts
- 2 billion people use YouTube every month, and YouTube shorts get 15 billion daily views.
- With shoppable ads and product tagging features, YouTube allows creators to make their video content directly shoppable.
These platforms are bursting with content, and established brands with brick-and-mortar offerings are scrambling to establish competitive digital offerings or secure a brand POV in this noisy social space. The key is to find the authentic voices and use them to amplify your product through UGC or influencer-sponsored content. Remembering that in an ideal world these platforms are distribution mechanisms, best used to drive traffic back to your owned site.
Building Your Video Strategy
Creating a successful video commerce strategy requires a deep understanding of who your customers are, what content type and format most appeals to them, and what your team is capable (realistically) of producing.
Questions to Ask Before Getting Started
These are the questions we ask new brands working with us on Refer or LIVE who are trying to build out a video programming plan:
1. Content Production. It’s important to make an honest index of your existing process for creating and producing content. This means asking questions like:
- What resources do you have available?
- Will you be creating short or long-form content, and how does that align with broader content goals?
- How often do you plan on posting and what systems/bandwidth do you have in place to maintain quality and consistency?
2. Channel Performance. Look at your current channels (such as they are) and assess which perform best for your brand – these assessments will help to inform your distribution strategy. Ask yourself:
- What content types resonate with your audience, right now? Which don’t?
- How do you segment your audience, and how can content align to these segments?
- How do you plan on utilizing your existing social channels? Are there gaps in your current social strategy?
- Do you have an owned platform and how are you currently set up to drive traffic/eyeballs back to it?
Once you have answers to these questions you can begin to think about larger content goals like: franchising content, establishing a programming cadence and choosing content themes that best align with your brand. But we start with a focus on production and distribution because without a clear strategy for what you’ll make and how you’ll make it, you’ll have trouble implementing any larger video commerce plans.
Here’s how the answers break down in practice:
Length Isn’t Everything
Short form may be popular, but it’s not always best for your brand. Consider all the content types when designing your video strategy. There are use cases (more on this below) where long form will be the best vehicle to tell your product story. Plus, a long form piece content can easily be “chunked” out into smaller videos to feed more birds. Don’t let length be the only arbiter of taste.
Long Form
Best suited for:
- New product drops and releases
- Try-ons with stylists
- Fireside chats and interviews
- Behind-the-scenes footage
This content should be polished (or as much as budget will allow), owned by the brand, and may work best in landscape format for desktop viewing (though that depends on your normal user traffic sources). When properly tagged and categorized on your website, it becomes a valuable asset in your content library.
Short Form
Perfect for:
- Promotions and limited releases
- User-generated content
- Influencer collaborations
- Quick product highlights
These mobile-first, portrait-oriented videos tend to be more spontaneous and authentic. They're ideal for social distribution and can be produced more frequently to maintain consistent engagement.
Posting Frequency
This should be entirely dependent on the channel and content type you’re posting on/creating. Be realistic to your company’s strengths (if you don’t have a content team, chances are you aren’t going to post long-form edited videos 2x a week. Just sayin’.)
- Leverage UGC for more regular content, as long as it doesn’t tarnish your brand voice.
- Consider how longer form content can be split into smaller nuggets. Maybe that 8-minute video should actually be 4 x 2-minute ones?
- Pair marketing campaigns (especially email + push) around sales or new releases with video content that amplifies the main message or a particular benefit/feature.
Pro tip: Frequency isn’t just about the amount of content you push, but also what kind of communications go into marketing that content. If the video content is particularly compelling (sale, new release, try on, limited access, etc.) then you’ll want to also consider the frequency of sms, push, email, social etc., leading up to that video.
Distribution
While social platforms don’t need to be your primary video commerce destination, they do play a crucial role in content distribution. Here’s how to use both:
1. Use social platforms to:
- Drive awareness: The algorithmic nature of platforms like Instagram and TikTok (or whoever is next) can help your content find relevant viewers who might not discover you otherwise. Especially compelling for small brands.
- Preview content: Sharing 15-second clips from an upcoming live shopping event or behind-the-scenes moments will entice viewers to join the full experience.
- Engage new audiences: Social platforms excel at casual, frequent engagement through comments, shares, and reactions. This ongoing dialogue keeps your brand top-of-mind.
- Direct traffic to owned channels: Use clear calls-to-action and compelling previews to guide viewers to your owned platforms where the full shopping experience lives. Think of social as the hook that leads to deeper engagement.
2. Focus owned channels on:
- Conversion optimization: Build shopping experiences that minimize friction and maximize conversion - seamless checkout flows, integrated product details and real-time inventory updates are great for this.
- Data collection: Track viewing patterns, purchase behavior, and engagement metrics without the limitations of third-party platforms. First-party data will help refine your video strategy.
- Community building: Create spaces where your most engaged customers can interact meaningfully with your brand and each other to foster loyalty and repeat engagement.
- Direct monetization: Owned channels give you complete control over monetization so you can implement multiple revenue streams without platform fees cutting into margins.
Where to Go From Here
Once you’ve decided on your strategy (multi-channel is ideal), assessed your current capabilities and defined your success metrics, you’re next best step is to… get started.
- Develop a realistic content calendar that accounts for your resources and production timeline.
- Include clear plans for A/B testing, performance benchmarking, and iteration based on feedback.
- Make sure you’re considering a mix of video hosted on your brand website and distribution via active social networks, email, and SMS campaigns.
If you don’t have an in-house team, find the production, design, and technical partners that can help you bring your videos to life. Studio has 10+ years’ experience helping early/mid-stage companies and enterprise teams create video commerce, and we love seeing the brand transformations that result.
The Case for Shoppable Video
Let’s review:
- Video is an audience-builder, for both loyal customers and brand new ones: it’s how most of us consume content and (for better or worse) make our buying decisions. Use it to create an open dialogue between your brand and its customers and foment trust in your product.
- Social is a brand-builder. Social channels aren’t going anywhere, and while they can feel over-saturated, they’re a great distribution channel (if utilized correctly) to drive users back to a brand’s owned site/platform.
- Strategy is a must. From content types to integrated shopping features, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to developing ecommerce video that converts.
But if you do it well… shoppable video has the potential to 10x your conversion, and effectively share your brand/product story with the people who most need to hear it.
Ready to implement video commerce for your brand? Contact Studio to learn how we can help build your video strategy and technical infrastructure.