How Livestream Shopping Can Grow Your Ecommerce Business
eCommerce is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a way of life. As the popularity of online commerce grows, innovators are developing new concepts to help it expand even further over the coming years. Livestream shopping and the ‘live commerce’ movement are some of the most promising concepts that are already shaping the future of eCommerce on a global scale.
The livestream commerce trend has its roots in China, a nation with a particularly thriving influencer industry. It quickly spread across the globe as the eCommerce industry continued to thrive after receiving a significant boost in 2020. Globally, the eCommerce industry is expected to be worth almost $5 trillion by 2023, and livestream eCommerce could prove to be a valuable tool to help businesses of all sizes grow their ranks.
Read on as we introduce the concept of live streamed commerce and explain how you can provide your audiences with purchasing options through popular live streaming channels.
How Popular is Live Streaming?
It’s estimated that nearly 79% of mobile users will move towards live streaming by the end of 2022. It’s unsurprising that brands across the globe are adjusting their digital marketing strategies around live streaming to keep up with the demands of their audiences.
Even big-name social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and Google have joined the livestream shopping industry, which is estimated to be worth $500 billion in 2022. Currently, the livestream eCommerce industry offers everything from health, beauty, fashion, home and fitness products to décor and tech items.
Understanding Livestream Shopping
Livestream shopping is one of the best tools eCommerce brands have available to build brand communities, share stories, and interact with their leads and customers in real-time. It offers an accelerated way to build rapport and trust with audiences and gives consumers simple, quick and novel methods of purchasing goods and services online.
eCommerce has rapidly taken over as the world’s favorite way to buy, and live streaming technology is set to take the novelty and convenience of online shopping to a new level.
A few of the many benefits offered by livestream shopping include:
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A simple, convenient, quick and engaging way to shop
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Easily accessible sources
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An entertaining and memorable purchasing experience
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A high degree of personalization
Livestream shopping is described as an intimate experience that facilitates real-time interactions between consumers and brands. Additionally, it gives viewers access to knowledgeable individuals who can explain more about key products and how to use them. Livestream eCommerce fosters conversation and makes it easy to build trust with viewers while allowing their perspectives to be heard and taken into account.
Brand Advantages of Livestream eCommerce
Livestream shopping offers brands and businesses a number of diverse benefits. First, live shopping reduces returns considerably. Statistically, around 20% of all products purchased online get returned.
This is primarily due to product information getting lost in translation when conveyed in the form of text. This creates mismatches between customers’ expectations of the products they buy and the nature of the products themselves.
Livestream shopping is a more straightforward commerce method that delivers all the details customers need about products in entertaining and memorable videos.
Livestream eCommerce also boasts a higher customer lifetime value (CLTV). This form of shopping allows brands to retain their customers by delivering value-driven content and a unique, novel shopping experience. Average order values tend to increase as customers become more familiar with the livestream shopping format.
This form of eCommerce promotes better quality engagement. Statistically, around 54% of customers say that they want brands to offer more video content. Those that do, provide their consumers with a more engaging shopping experience that includes the product knowledge they need to make informed decisions.
Plus, brands that offer live shopping can collect more accurate first-party data on comments, likes and shares when live streaming gets integrated into their eCommerce platforms.
How to Use Livestream Shopping in Your eCommerce Business
You can use livestream shopping for your own eCommerce brand in a number of different ways. Each one allows you to build community and recognition for your brand in a lasting way.
Interactive Real-Time Sessions
Engaging and informing your viewers are both effective strategies for keeping them interested in buying what you have to offer. FAQs, Q&A sessions and online interviews are all great ways to convert viewers into potential customers while adding value to their experiences with your brand. These real-time sessions are also useful resources for communicating important information about your business.
Behind-the-Scenes Live Videos
It’s proven that videos boost sales, and it’s never been easier to humanize your brand than it is in the age of technology. Behind-the-scenes videos create a feeling of exclusiveness, which will boost your engagement rates and leave your target audience feeling included in the day-to-day operations of your business.
Promotions and Discounts
This is another widely used tactic for increasing purchases in the context of livestream shopping. You can offer your viewers and shoppers discounts, promotions and freebies to increase their willingness to buy from you. These bargains can be offered live for a set length of time during a live streaming session to place urgency on consumers.
You could also offer a fortune draw for certain products at significant discounts, or offer discounts on the first number of purchases made during a live webcast.
Teaming Up with Influencers
Collaborating with industry influencers is another efficient way of growing your business using livestream eCommerce. Celebrity livestream shopping is a particularly fast-growing trend, as it helps live streams to stand out to potential viewers amid thousands of other, similar videos.
Consumers are often drawn to the celebrities themselves, but another key aspect of a great livestream eCommerce session is showing innovative content. If your live commerce content can capture the attention of your target market with unique and memorable content, it will be far more likely to compel them to make purchases.
Providing Real Value and Entertainment to Target Audiences
The trick to successfully integrating livestream shopping into your eCommerce offerings doesn’t lie in the shopping itself. Instead, it’s the entertainment, interest, novelty and fun that your brand and its influencers bring to the live space that gets your products sold.
Offering your audience value-packed content that thrills and entertains them is the best way to encourage them to click the buy button again and again.
The Takeaway
Livestream shopping is the next big thing set to take hold of the global eCommerce industry. It has evolved from a simple online shopping trend that’s ideal for start-ups to a viable way to engage customers, reduce product returns, build loyal brand communities, and boost sales at massive scales.
