Retailers Rejoice: YouTube Shopping Videos, Product Links Embedded

Have you seen what a YouTube shopping video looks like yet? I think this is going to be one of the biggest trends in shopping in the coming year. I had heard that last month YouTube announced that all verified partners in good standing would be able to start linking directly to their merchandise in videos, but it didn’t click in my mind how powerful that type of shopping experience could be until I saw this Juicy Couture video below which shows this much improved technology it in action.

In the past when we’ve seen shoppable videos (like the one from Target), they’ve been awkward and wonky, and it many times required more than one click to get to the product page. As you can see in the YouTube shopping video below, all that has changed. It’s now a smooth, one-click shopping user experience.

Since this is only one of the first YouTube shopping videos which takes advantage of this new technology (Gucci, Neiman Marcus, Barney’s and a few others have also created shopping videos, but not on YouTube), just image what other brands will want to get in on this in the coming year. It could definitely take shopping to a whole new level.

According to L2 Think Tank and Social Commerce Today, Facebook and Twitter aren’t as effective for the beauty or fashion industry as they are for other industries. Referral traffic is on the decline. On the flip side, it has more than doubled from YouTube in the past year. It was so strange for me to read that because when I think of social media and how it affects our offline decisions (including shopping), I usually don’t even consider YouTube. I have a feeling that is going to change a lot in the coming months.

If you would like to read more about this and find out how you can create your own YouTube shopping video, you can click over to Merch Store Annotations and Merch Where It Matters Most. Try clicking on some of the things you see in this video below. It’s wild! Even the rhinestone necklace on the cat is clickable and buyable. This definitely has the potential to evolve into a powerful form of inbound marketing.