Can brands build shoppable video widgets in-house?
There might be instances when brands think of building shoppable videos in-house. These are brands who don’t fully understand the complexities that they would get into once they build in-house and just think of it like another small plugin.
What technical challenges do brands face when building video widgets in-house?
Page speed and performance issues
Video is one of the hardest assets to optimize without hurting site performance. Brands often struggle with:
Proper video encoding and transcoding for smooth streaming across devices
Auto-generating lightweight thumbnails (20–50 KB) for fast initial loads
Lazy loading video sections and JavaScript so assets don’t block page load
Chunking and batching JavaScript to keep bundles lightweight
Without solving these, videos slow down pages, directly impacting SEO and conversions.
Lack of a dashboard to manage all videos
Most in-house implementations rely on hard-coded video links in the frontend. This makes video management painful
Adding or removing videos requires code changes
Non-technical teams can’t manage content independently
Scaling videos across pages becomes time-consuming and error-prone
A lack of a centralized dashboard limits agility and slows down experimentation.
Limited templates & customizations
Typically, brands add only 4–5 videos to the homepage, with no support for collection or product pages. Customization options remain limited, and several key video formats are missing:
Stories
Grids
Floating cards
Banners
This restricts how videos can be used across different customer touchpoints.
Zero or low ROI
With videos placed at only one or two locations, very few sessions actually engage with them. Without covering multiple buyer journeys or touchpoints, video engagement remains low and fails to meaningfully impact conversion rates or revenue.
No personalization
Most in-house solutions lack the infrastructure needed to personalize video experiences based on user behavior or attributes, such as:
New vs returning users
Geo-based targeting
As a result, all users see the same video experience, reducing relevance and effectiveness.
Why outsourcing makes sense
The benefits of buying directly target all the drawbacks that come with building in-house. Buying provides you with a dashboard to manage vidoes, no page speed issues and more.