MUMBAI: Snapdeal, India’s leading online marketplace, has added a wide range of product videos on its app. Placed under ‘SD TV’, the ten-second short videos showcase key features and utility of the featured products.

Snapdeal is focused on the needs of value-conscious buyers in India. Over the past two years, it has vastly expanded the range of value-priced merchandize, including popular regional brands and seller-branded products, which directly fulfill the price & functionality needs of the audience.

To help buyers make an engaging and informed buying decision for these products, Snapdeal has launched videos of these products, which helps users get access to high-quality visuals of the product from all angles. More than 75% of Snapdeal’s buyers are from Tier 2 & 3 cities and the product videos help overcome language and literacy barriers.

“We have created a huge & growing library of short-format videos to help users get an enhanced idea about the functionality of a product, which is quite important given that a significant number of products that we sell may be lesser known seller-brands or a product that has consumer has never seen before,” said a Snapdeal spokesperson.

The videos also help buyers discover new and interesting products, which is aligned with Snapdeal’s positioning to provide a fun and engaging discovery-led online experience for its users.

“Videos have helped us drive sales. Ten-second videos of products are far more captivating and help buyers to make decisions faster than static pictures of the products concerned,” added Snapdeal spokesperson. The product videos have boosted sales of featured products by an average of 30%.

The product videos are a boon for seller brands given that they cannot afford to showcase their products in expensive advertisements in print and on TV. Snapdeal not only provides a platform for them to showcase their products better but also shoots the videos for them.

The market for value-priced merchandize is worth nearly USD 163 billion and only about 1-2% of this is online, compared to the 10-40% online penetration for branded products like mobiles, electronics, etc.

Popular products include USB air coolers, 14-in-1 choppers, compact shoe racks, mobile phone stand with a magnifier for the bigger screen experience etc.

More than 70 million users visit Snapdeal every month to browse through and buy from nearly 200 million SKUs listed by nearly 500,000 registered sellers.  In the last two years alone, the company has seen 60,000+ new seller partners come on board adding over 50 Million new listings.