Most video strategy advice assumes a team. Content pillars, a quarterly calendar, a production pipeline. If you are running a store, that document gets written once and never opened again. This is the version that fits the time you actually have.
Stop thinking in campaigns, start thinking in questions
A catalogue does not need a video strategy. It needs videos that answer the specific things that stop people buying, and you already know what those are, because customers ask you and because returns tell you.
Write down the three questions you answer most often in customer messages. That is your first three videos. Not a calendar, a list of three.
The order to work in
One: your best seller. Not your worst performer. Video amplifies existing demand far more reliably than it creates demand from nothing, so start where traffic already exists and you get a readable answer in weeks instead of a shrug in months.
Two: the two products behind it. Same treatment, same measurement.
Three: the product with the highest return rate. This is where video pays in a way nothing else does, because most returns in e-commerce come from a mismatch between what someone expected and what arrived, and that mismatch is almost always about scale, texture or mechanism, all three of which a video shows and a photograph does not.
Only after those should you think about anything resembling a calendar.
Three placements, one file
Each video should earn its keep in more than one place.
- The product page, near the images. Below the fold it becomes decoration.
- One paid social ad. This is where you get feedback in days rather than months, and where creative fatigue makes fresh assets continuously valuable.
- Email, as a still frame with a play button linking to the page where it plays. Most inboxes will not play video reliably, so the click is what you are optimising.
Generate in the ratio each placement wants rather than cropping a single master file. A crop puts your product where the interface sits.
What to measure, and what to ignore
Measure conversion rate on the page, not revenue, because revenue moves with traffic. On the ad, measure cost per acquisition against your existing creative. Ignore views, ignore engagement, ignore anything that goes up when a video is merely seen. Two numbers is enough for the first month.
Cadence, realistically
A video a week is a fantasy for a one-person store. A video a month, placed properly and measured, will teach you more than twelve unplaced ones. Once the first three have told you something, the honest question is not "how do I produce more" but "which of these actually changed a number", and the answer usually narrows what you do rather than expanding it.
What it costs to start
Credit-based, credits do not expire, cost shown before each generation. The €5 entry offer produces one short video of about 12 seconds from your own product link, which means finding out whether any of this applies to your store costs five euros rather than a planning cycle.
Related reading: Working out whether product video pays and Video ads for small businesses.