Livestream Shopping is Taking E-Commerce to the Next Level

The essence of Livestream shopping is the way it incorporates live video content recently. It enables two-way communication and enables the viewers to flawlessly purchase or save the featured products straight from the platform.

Livestream shopping effectively combines the physical retailers and ecommerce store kind of business. It puts digital retailers in front of a huge online audience and allows them to interact on a one-to-one basis. A highly effective way of shopping that has generated $60 billion in global sales in 2019.

The benefits of Livestream shopping for retailers comprise of reduction in the period of purchase time, accelerating customer engagement, and promotion of higher sales. The US livestream shopping market is expected to reach $11billion at the end of 2021 and by the end of 2023, it will soar up to $25 billion.

So, taking you straight to the topic, today I shall discuss the most prevailing four considerations that will help you analyze your choices about adopting the Livestream shopping method. Because Livestream fits into an overall ecommerce strategy.

It’s More Than Just Fashion & Beauty

Livestream shopping breaks down the fences to buy all that several ecommerce experiences just couldn’t deliver. The virtual try-on sessions and in-store demos will surely help at-home shoppers to quick decisions.

Of course, the fashion and the beauty business have been the forerunners of livestream shopping. However, there are plenty of opportunities out there for the big box, grocery, specialty retailers, and much more. Let us understand with some examples.

• A home enhancement retailer walks the viewers through its current garden center offerings to celebrate a specific region and also answers customer queries related to products in real-time. It also builds trust and engagement and the viewers can add products to their cart straight direct from the Livestream.
• A grocery dealer can choose to offer every Saturday morning by conducting livestream shopping sessions. The dealer can do it innovatively with a lot of ideas and inspirational recipes or anything that can drive the customers to do purchases. Like crafting the perfect game spread, holiday desserts, offering tips for the kitchen, Q&A sessions for maintaining a healthy diet, and other complementary product recommendations. The featured items will be purchased straight from a livestream module.
• Similarly, a furniture retailer can help the shoppers to know about its sofa collection, showcasing the feel with different size models and highlighting the fabric differences. The more the retailer addresses the questions, the more promising the performance shall be will be along with the assurance the users get to buy big-ticket online purchases

The Livestream experiences are persuading and compelling due to the feeling which they give to the customers of coming right to their door. In a way, it accentuates higher engagement and human interaction. In addition, these experiences help so many customers who are not able to visit a store or who prefer to shop from the comfort of their homes.

Choosing the Right Platform

With the two major paths that enable livestream shopping, you are all set to rock the show. They are either the Livestream platform that integrates with the retailer’s ecommerce platform, or, the entire shopping experience is given by third-party platforms like Facebook, Amazon, or Google’s Shop loop.

Integrating the Livestream shopping platform into one’s website or mobile app will boost the retailer’s control around the carts, customer account data, inventory management, etc. Such platforms serve as an adjunct to your system. The other benefit it gives is that it can be deployed quickly in combination with considering the capacity and scalability during the peak time of the traffic.

Performing on a third-party platform like Amazon Live or Facebook Live Shopping is easier at an early stage. Especially, when you access these platforms for commercial purposes. But in the long run, this won’t be an appealing proposition because you are decentralizing the entire shopping experience away from your own business platform.

This would mean you are giving the entire control to some other platform. And this may include the newest opportunities that you can get directly from your platform as well as the chances of re-engagement. It is a lost opportunity for data capturing.

Maximum Leverage of Livestream Content

The content must be repurposed from livestream shopping events every time you perform. The retailers who wish to host from their domains will offer several video archives where the viewers can watch past events on demand.

If you depend on a retailer’s technology platform, the archived editions may not include the shoppable component or the previous chat history. Moreover, the retailers can also consider how to use content in smaller segments through social or other channels. This also includes the way the Livestream excerpts might enhance a product detail page.

Outcome Assessment

The end result has to be a conversion after all. The retailers need to assess a broad set of outcomes that arrive from a Livestream shopping effort. This may include the following points.

• Customer Data: You must know who attended the live event. Also, you need to keep the track of what did they buy, the type of questions the users asked, and the way you would strategize your business from the insights that you get.
• The Complete Engagement experience: You must analyze this as compared to other content streams
• The reducing consideration period and the decreasing rate of returns are based on the capacity of the viewers to ask questions while the ongoing event. Looking at the products that are outside the content on a static product detail page

Conclusion

Live steam shopping is considered to be a hot eCommerce trend in recent times. However, at its heart, this entire game is so simple to do, yet so impactful. The essence lies in doing it well and learning how to leverage traditional marketing skills like researching your audience, choosing the right business growth tactics, and on ways to expand the community.

Once you get those things right, you will get the chance to capitalize on a new approach to the way of digital commerce that gives first preference to audience engagement and fosters trust just the way a traditional online retailer does it in routine.

The potential of livestream shopping is large by way of engaging audiences and boosting your sales. Every retailer can get this opportunity by exploring how livestream shopping takes place in their larger e-commerce strategy.