It’s clear that customers appreciate informative videos that tell them everything they need to know about a product. So, if you use WooCommerce for your business, don’t miss the opportunity to use videos.
While you can easily insert one or more videos to the product description, WooCommerce does not have a built-in option to create featured videos. In this article, we’ll show how to add videos to your WooCommerce product gallery.
3 must-have types of videos in your WooCommerce product gallery
- Explainer videos – A good explainer video focuses on both the “why” and the “how” question. It helps customers understand why your product, service or even internal process is important. And they are in high demand! 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
- Demo videos – Most people have been persuaded to buy a software or application by a video. If you’re selling a product or service, you absolutely need a good product demonstration strategy. Because once people understand the “why”, they also want to know the “how.”
- Tutorial videos – A product tutorial takes your marketing to another level because it’s more than just an explanation of how your products work.
Let’s say your company needs a product, but you don’t know exactly what options are out there, which ones are the best, how they work, etc. So you do a quick search on YouTube.
No doubt you’ll be inclined to buy the exact brand you’ve seen a demo video of. After all, you’ve just been introduced to that brand. What’s more, even products you already know can give rise to unexpected doubt.
The moment the developer offers the answers you are looking for, they get your attention and show that they care about your needs.
Adding videos to the WooCommerce product gallery
While WooCommerce doesn’t offer the ability to add videos to the product gallery, you can easily do so with the WooThumbs for WooCommerce plugin.
With this plugin, you can add videos directly to the product gallery with just one click. You can embed videos that are hosted somewhere, like on Youtube, Vimeo or self-hosted.
For this tutorial, you will need a WooCommerce website with products already set up. You will also need to purchase the WooThumbs for WooCommerce plugin.
Step 1 – Install WooThumbs for WooCommerce
Once you have purchased the plugin and received the zip file, simply go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin and upload the zip file. Then activate the plugin and enter the license key.
Step 2 – Adding a video to the WooCommerce product gallery
With WooThumbs you can add the following options.
- Videos from third-party hosting platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud and more)
- Embedded HTML
- Self-hosted videos
Let’s take a look at all three in turn.
Videos from third-party hosting platforms
There are a number of third-party video hosting platforms that can work well with WooThumbs. Youtube and Vimeo are the most popular. In this article, we will use YouTube as an example.
The first step is to copy the URL of the video you want to add to your product gallery.
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Products > All Products and select the product you want to add the URL to.
On the ‘Edit product’ page, scroll down to the ‘Product gallery’ section and click on the ‘Add product gallery images’ link.
Upload a thumbnail image of the video you want to display as a featured image or use an existing image in your media gallery.
Upload your image to the media library and add your media URL (in this case the YouTube URL) into the Media URL section under the WOOTHUMBS MEDIA DETAILS heading.
Then click on the Add to gallery button and the video will be added to your product gallery.
Scroll to the top of the page and click the Update button in the Publish section to activate your changes.
Embedded HTML
WooThumbs also allows you to insert a 360 VR image, video or external image into your product gallery.
If you enter a corresponding URL in the Media URL field (see the section above), WooThumbs will embed it as an iframe.
This action will create an interactive 360° image that will be embedded directly into the WooThumbs gallery.
Self-hosted video
If you don’t want to use a third-party service like Youtube or Vimeo, you can host your videos yourself, as long as they are in MP4 video format.
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Products > All Products and select the product you want to add the URL to.
On the “Edit product” page, scroll down to the “Product gallery” section and click on the “Add product gallery images” link.
Upload a preview image for the video.
Click on the Attach MP4 button in the WOOTHUMBS MEDIA DETAILS section.
Set your aspect ratio. Our images are square, so we have set the aspect ratio to 1:1. Choose the ratio that suits your business.
Select your MP4 video or upload it to the media library.
Then click on the Attach MP4 button and the video will be added to your product gallery.
Scroll to the top of the page and click Update in the Publish section to activate your changes.
That’s it!
Add video to your WooCommerce product gallery now
Videos are an important part of any business, including your WooCommerce store.
Adding videos to your WooCommerce product gallery will help you with the following.
- Entice customers to buy your products by providing all the necessary information in an intuitive way
- Improve your store ranking
- Keep customers in your store longer and give you more time to convert visitors into customers
The truth is that bypassing the WooCommerce restriction that only allows you to add images is simpler than most people think. We’ve shown you how to add videos to your WooCommerce product gallery using WooThumbs for WooCommerce and our detailed guide above.
