AiBuy Shapes The Future Of Shoppable Video Technology - Forbes

When Instagram rolled out its Checkout program earlier this year to enable select influencers create shoppable content on its platform - a pandora’s box of future e-commerce has opened. The natural next step in seamless content-to-shopping experience will be about engaging audiences exactly where they are: whether on the social media platform itself exploring content, or browsing the web - opportunities for conversions are everywhere. Given that 96% of consumers find video helpful in making a purchasing decision and 72% of businesses report that video improved their customer conversion rates - technologies behind shoppable videos are on the rise. To better understand the current state of shoppable videos and its impact on the fashion industry, I interviewed Ryan Scott, Chief Technology Officer at AiBuy, a company that created and patented a video store overlay technology.

It is predicted that by 2022, video will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic. AiBuy's ... [+] patented overlay store technology creates a seamless shoppable video.

Courtesy of AiBuy

Shoppable video had its ups and downs - in its early stages before the emergence of your company, many users remember it being slow, complex, and buggy...  what has changed? 

Ryan Scott: AiBuy has a lot of experience in this regard, as a pioneer in this market, we have learned what works and what doesn’t. Two things that have helped to change the landscape are better adoption of HTML5 web standards as well as higher-speed connectivity over 4G LTE and even better connectivity with 5G. Together they have removed most of the key barriers to a smooth shoppable video experience for customers.

Can you name three industries where your technology can revolutionize the shopping experience?

We see our technology transforming the way brands and users think about digital advertising as a whole, but specifically we see great potential for retail brands, influencers, and digital publishers. 

A viewer-to-customer is that a journey of one or a few clicks?

We pay great attention to user experience, and with our technology, there can be several paths to conversion via any media content: Link-out options allow viewers to be directed to products and resources; Lead generation options can be used to gain new leads and bring viewers into a company's sales funnel; With e-commerce, we strive to make the process as fast and straightforward as possible and continue to adopt the latest technologies such as Apple Pay and Google Pay to allow quick and easy purchase without leaving the content.

AiBuy's video overlay store with seemless UX design.

Courtesy of AiBuy

A number of shoppable video platforms exist but they are all feature different UX and approaches to making a purchase. Without a unified standard - how do you foresee a quick adoption of your technology?

We put a lot of effort into evaluating our UX and UI elements to continuously look for ways to improve. We have also designed numerous call-to-action elements such as text fly-outs, cue-point driven slide-outs, and hotspots to draw attention, and work with a user’s natural curiosity. Through this organic approach, we have seen great success in taking users without guidance that have never used interactive video and empowered them to interact and purchase with ease. 

Fashion industry faces a fierce price competition - how does your technology benefit this specific industry? 

This is precisely the point we are aiming to make with our technology - to survive the competition, to sustain any fashion business into the future, companies must always be on the lookout for the latest technologies that reduce customer’s journey as well as barriers to purchase. Our patented technology is being adopted by the next generation of fashion unicorns in the making. Similar to how social media has become the new norm for customer acquisition, the shoppable video can and should be a new revenue stream for fashion brands seeking to monetize their content.

Coordinating media content release with available shoppable inventory would require a specific fashion retailer to completely re-imagine their production schedule. Is that feasible?

I would argue that most companies are already seeing the value in this level of coordination and have been moving in this direction. Most people will lose interest in a product if there is too much time between the marketing in which they learn of the product and the available release. We can take this one step further by allowing the customer to act on the emotional and impulsive connection to good marketing. ‘See now, buy now’ can truly become a reality for any brand today. 

Shoppable video is becoming the new norm in digital retail experience.

Courtesy of AiBuy

Given a number of data leaks scandals with major social media and other firms, how do you protect your users data?

We take the security of AiBuy platform extremely seriously. Our systems do not store any end-customer data other than anonymized analytics, additional end-customer data is kept within the e-commerce platform of integration such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify, and Magento. Also, we only currently only work with global credit card processors that support the tokenization of card information as well as for any sensitive information. We also utilize encrypted secure storage solutions that prevent any access to the data other than through approved and verified application paths. 

It is predicted that by 2022, video will make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic. What do you see shoppable video can become in the future? How far/close are we to that reality?

We see video as a key component of not just the future of shopping but also in maintaining brand identity and consumer engagement. I believe numbers here speak for themselves: 72% of consumers preferring to learn about products through video and 85% wanting to see more video content from brands. By empowering brands to build and foster strong connections directly with their customers, AiBuy safely leads a rapid shift in the desire for shoppable media technologies among consumers and brands.

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