It’s hard to imagine a more lively discussion topic than the optimal length for product videos in online shops.

More fuel to the fire is provided by a current e-commerce case study (DE/EN):

The study revealed that short videos on shopping sites with a duration of 1:30 minutes were received significantly more positively by online users as compared to videos around 6 minutes long. Attention span drops considerably after 48% of the total video duration, according to the results of the experiment run by the Usability Lab at the Fachhochschule Duesseldorf.

The study also delivers valuable input related to the integration of the videos, mentioning that photo icons for the videos were better understood than pure textual links.

The “30 second rule” (DE/EN) from the online marketing world didn’t match one to one with video shopping.

In general however, merchants with shorter video clips have an advantage. The success of Shoeline’s twenty second clips seem to confirm this.

Originally posted in German by Stephan Randler, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.