Adding Video to Product Descriptions in Shopify with Shogun

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video might be worth a thousand more. 

One recent poll found that the most common issue people have with online shopping is “I’m not able to see products in-person”. It can be difficult to convince someone to hand over their hard-earned dollars for something they never got a chance to inspect themselves. How do they know it’s exactly what they want? What if the item is broken, damaged, or otherwise flawed? Even when free returns are available, thinking about the potential hassle of chasing down a refund can still be a strong psychological barrier. 

With high-quality product videos, you can recreate the in-person shopping experience as much as possible, helping you alleviate these concerns and make potential customers feel more confident about placing an order. 

Indeed, instead of just using words to communicate information, why not add video to your product description in Shopify to show exactly what you mean? In this guide, we’ll go over all the steps involved with adding video to your product descriptions (as well as other parts of the product page). 

Adding Video to the Product Description

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Shogun on your Shopify store, all you need to do to add a video to a product description is follow these steps:

• Select the “Apps” option in the left sidebar of the Shopify dashboard.
• Open Shogun. 
• Go to the “Pages” section of the Shogun app and select the product page you would like to customize (you can set the “Page type” filter to “Product” or use the search bar to quickly find the page you’re looking for) — this will open the page in Shogun’s visual editor. 
• Select the “Elements” icon in the left sidebar of the Shogun visitor editor (it’s the one that looks like a plus sign inside of a circle) to open the element library.
• Click and hold on the “Video” option in the element library and place it in the same area of your page as the product description. 
• Once the “Video” element has been placed on the page, click on it to open up its customization settings — to add your video content, you’ll need to link to its YouTube or Vimeo URL here. 

Shogun also offers a wide variety of other customization options for the Video element, such as:

• Choose between a 16 x 9 (widescreen) or 4 x 3 aspect ratio.
• Determine whether the video loops once it is finished.
• Determine whether the video automatically plays once the product page loads (otherwise, the visitor will need to manually click on the video for it to start playing). 
• Determine whether the video is muted by default (if you have enabled the autoplay option, then this option must be enabled as well).
• Determine whether related videos from other channels are displayed at the end of the video (this option is only available for videos hosted on YouTube). 
• If you’d like, you can choose to have the video start at a later time or end at an earlier time than the video you’re linking to, though this may not work well if you also want to loop your video. 

Adding Video to Your Product Page Outside of the Description

With the method described in the previous section, you could also add a video to any other part of your product page.

There are many reasons why you might want to do so. For example, check out this Uniqlo product page for a lightweight jacket, which features a video of a model walking around while wearing the product. This provides the visitor with visual information, such as how the jacket fits and how the fabric moves, that would be difficult – or even impossible – to convey through images alone. 

Also, observe how Apple designed the product page for the latest iPhone — there are dozens of videos scattered about, each showcasing how a different feature works or benefits the customer. 

Whether you sell apparel, electronics, or some other type of product, you can use video anywhere on your product pages to help visitors feel like they’re informed enough to go ahead and make the purchase.

Adding a Video Carousel to Product Pages

Another thing you may have noticed on that iPhone product page is that they use a lot of slideshows (also known as carousels) to display their videos. 

This method is useful because it allows you to display a variety of different videos without forcing the visitor to scroll down too much. According to a 2018 study, the average visitor spends most of their time on websites “above the fold”, meaning without scrolling down at all. And about three-fourths of page-viewing time is spent within the first 2,160 vertical pixels — that’s only two screenfuls of space. 

So, you should make an effort to reduce the amount of scrolling that a visitor would need to do in order to see your product videos. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that they won’t see them at all. 

To add a video carousel to a product page using Shogun:

• Open the page you would like to customize in Shogun’s visual editor.
• Select the “Slider” option in the element library and place it on the page. 
• In the Slider element customization settings, adjust the “Number of slides” option to the number of videos you want to feature. You can then add a Video element (as well as any other elements you want) into each slide. 

Your other customization options for the Slider element include:

• Determine if arrows are displayed on the sides of your slideshow, which visitors will be able to use to toggle between the different slides (you can also select the exact color used for these arrows).
• Determine if dots are displayed at the bottom of your slideshow — this will indicate which slide the visitor is currently viewing (you can select the exact color used for these dots as well). 
• Choose whether the arrow and dot controls are displayed next to or on top of your slideshow. 
• Determine whether your slideshow plays automatically or if the visitor needs to click on the slideshow to transition to the next slide (if you decide to make your slideshow automatic, you’ll also be able to determine how long each slide is displayed).
• Select an animation for your transitions — a number of different fade, zoom, and slide options are available.

Adding Personalized Videos to Product Pages

It’s also worth noting that Shogun allows you to set up personalized experiences — you can show one version of a page to some of your visitors while simultaneously showing an alternate version to others.

For example, if you’re currently promoting one of your products through an influencer marketing campaign, you should consider swapping out your default product video with one that features the influencer themselves using your product. This will create a smoother transition from the influencer’s page to yours, thus making your campaign more effective. 

First, you’ll need to create a segment for the audience you’re targeting:

• Open Shogun and select the “Personalization” option in the left sidebar.
• Select “Segments”.
• Click on the “Create segment” button. 
• Set the conditions for your segment — in this case, you would use a Referrer condition and set it up for the UTM tag you provided to the influencer for your campaign.

Once your segment has been saved, you can then use it to create a new variant of a page in the visual editor:

• After opening the page you want to customize in Shogun’s visual editor, click on the “Personalization” button located near the top-right corner of your screen (it’s the one that looks like a profile of a person with slider bars next to them). 
• Click on the “Turn on personalization” button.
• Select the segment you just created, then click on the “Add variant” button. 
• In this new variant of the page, swap out the original video for your alternate version. 

And once you’ve published these changes, the traffic you receive from the influencer marketing campaign will be presented with the alternate version of your video, while everyone else will still see the original version. 

Overall, you can use Shogun features such as personalized experiences and the visual editor to get a better return on investment out of your marketing efforts and improve your Shopify store’s conversion rate and sales figures.