Online retailers tap online engagement to increase sales through short videos

Of late, there is a rising trend of more number of e-commerce firms relying on short video promotions in order to cash in on the burgeoning netizens, who love to watch anything online. As the festive season is on, more and more online e-tailers are coming up with 30 seconds to one-minute videos, either in the form of tutorials or in the form of flash sales, to enhance the online engagement.Amazon BLINK StudioFor instance, the global e-commerce major, Amazon has unveiled BLINK, a digital imaging studio, specifically for the purposes of making images and videos, which will eventually trigger the passion amongst the online aficionados to buy products online.Sales IncreaseAccording to a statement issued by Amazon, the e-commerce firm reported net sales for the third quarter, ended September 30, 2017, at $43.7 billion, a robust 34% rise in contrast with the same quarter of 2016.The Seattle-headquartered e-commerce major said that Q3 net income was pegged at $256 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, as against the net income of $252 million, or $0.52 per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2016. What is more, the operating cash flow also was up 14% to $17.1 billion for the trailing twelve months, in comparison with $15 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2016. Amazon is present in the branded merchandise industry through its Amazon Custom and Merch by Amazon platforms.

Unlimited free two-day shipping According to asicentral.com report, Amazon Business service launched Business Prime Shipping, offering unlimited free two-day shipping for multi-user customers in the U.S. and Germany. Amazon Business also expanded to Japan and India, and now serves businesses in all five countries. Amazon Business is an online B2B marketplace that allows end-buyer businesses to buy products directly, explicitly cutting out the middleman. It’s a model that, along with other Amazon initiatives, has some in the promotional products industry concerned.In discussing Q3 highlights, Amazon CEO/Founder Jeff Bezos was especially excited about advancements being made with Alexa – a voice-interactive intelligent personal assistant. “In the last month alone, we’ve launched five new Alexa-enabled devices, introduced Alexa in India, announced integration with BMW, surpassed 25,000 skills, integrated Alexa with Sonos speakers, taught Alexa to distinguish between two voices and more. Because Alexa’s brain is in the (Amazon Web Services) cloud, her new abilities are available to all Echo customers, not just those who buy a new device,” said Bezos. “And it’s working – customers have purchased tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices, given Echo devices over 100,000 5-star reviews and active customers are up more than 5 times since the same time last year.”Web PlatformBeyond Alexa advancements, Amazon is pushing to populate its web platform with more promotional and instructional product videos. According to a Bloomberg report, Amazon has invited an estimated two million merchant partners to take part in a test program that sees the e-commerce company coordinating the creation of short product videos. Furthermore, the aim is to have many videos posted online by mid-December to catch the attention – and business – of holiday shoppers, noted the report. The video service is a bid to cater to consumer demand for product videos – and to keep shoppers from visiting competitors’ YouTube and Facebook in search of such videos, added the report.