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Live commerce is the newest trend in the world of marketing and sales, which is catching up fast with the sellers due to its ability to provide greater sales conversion. Live commerce involves live-streaming video events where customers can purchase the product simultaneously.
A live presentation of the product is made online by the sellers, with which the customers can connect from different locations.
The new era of shopping and selling is marketing through live commerce, which is a much-needed advancement in teleshopping and eCommerce. Here, customers get the opportunity to buy the product directly during the live-streaming of the various features and offers of the product. Live commerce provides an efficient way to communicate to the prospective consumer about the product, thereafter successfully selling the products.
Some shoppers do not like the feel of online shopping and may find it boring, while others prefer interaction before buying. Live commerce provides a way where both physical feel and online shopping meet. Live commerce is a more engaging and entertaining way to shop, and experts believe it will be used more extensively in the future.
Live commerce in India still has a long way to go with huge growth prospects, owing to the current industry demographics. With live commerce giant, Plaza, providing free trial and testing waters options, Indian products have a real chance to reach the masses through the next big thing in social marketing.
India as a country boasts 780.27million internet users, which shows the rising trend of digital media in the country. The Indian eCommerce industry has witnessed a massive rise of 36% in orders in the last quarter of 2020, with personal care, beauty, and wellness driving the trend. India’s live commerce market is expected to reach a gross merchandise value (GMV) of US$ 4-5 billion by 2025.
With such a large audience, the need for retailers and sellers to come up with more innovative and engaging ways to sell their products is greater than ever now. The onset of the pandemic has also rendered the traditional way of shopping useless to the consumer. Therefore, there is a need to improvise on the digital methods of marketing and selling products, all while keeping the customer engaged in the shopping experience.
Brand owners thinking about how to effectively utilize Live Stream commerce can consider the example of Lululemon's live stream commerce with assisted shopping.
Live commerce is the new age trend in eCommerce aimed at making the online shopping experience more compatible with the customers’ preferences. It boosts the online shopping experience in various ways, making it more appealing to its target audience. Some of its salient features are:
· Live commerce bridges the gap between buyers and sellers by creating an environment where the customer can freely interact with the seller while shopping.
· By merging online retailing with live streaming, companies are endeavoring towards bringing a personalized experience back into shopping.
· Live commerce leads to better consumer engagement in the buying process, thereby leading to better conversions. The customers can now ask questions and have their queries answered by the retailers during the live streaming process giving them greater clarity about the product that they intend to buy.
· It also gives the retailers a better idea of what the customer needs and how they can better tailor their products to increase their sales conversions.
The conjunction of video with shopping (which can be done even on Zoom Call)helps close the gap between the customer and the product.
Live commerce first began in China pioneered by Taobao, now the world’s biggest eCommerce website. Owned by Alibaba, Taobao enables businessmen, farmers, and entrepreneurs to live to stream their goods across a wider audience.
It is now the eighth-most visited website in the world, generating increased traffic, which translates into increased conversion rates. Following its model, other players have joined into the trend finding new features in live streaming leading to greater engagement amongst the customer. With tools such as using influencers and organizing shows online, live commerce has exponentially increased the customer base in China.
The success of live commerce in China has paved its way in other countries as an effective eCommerce tool that increases the customer base and leads to faster conversion rates. Sellers across the world are incorporating live streaming commerce into their online sales practices to boost their revenues by providing better interaction to the customers.
As brands make a shift to the world of live stream commerce, they are bound to be bombarded with several decisions regarding how to pursue live commerce business and create a well-directed customer reach and engagement program. Not all the ways of live stream commerce are suitable for all. Each brand is different, and the way to engage customers may vary with each. Some may require multiple platforms, whereas some may require dedicated one-to-one selling. Basic forms of live stream commerce are:
A digital showroom or virtual showroom lets retail buyers and sellers engage customers and sell their products through an online platform.
The retailers can create their own virtual experience with the help of ARQ and let the customer surf through a variety of products in 3D.
It gives the customer a sense of control over the process of buying.
Group videos involve making online shopping a group activity. The retailers can set up a shopping event for a group of people with similar interests to interact with each other and the sellers while engaging in the shopping experience.
The emphasis is on making the online shopping experience an entertaining one.
Live streaming is another way of online selling wherein the customers can interact with the program host as they explain the features and other aspects of their products.
The interaction during the live stream is open on both sides so that the customer can ask their queries regarding the product to the host and get answers as required.
It also serves as an effective feedback tool for the product. A variety of instruments, such as chat boxes, polls, etc., can be used to generate the customers’ inclination and engagement in the entire selling process.
These are some of the tools utilized by the sellers in live commerce to make the selling process entertaining for the customer.
Click below to get an in-depth understanding of Live streaming commerce.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, online interaction became crucial for business and consumer approaches. Especially with the extension of education and medical consultation services online, we understood that the online medium that earlier seemed difficult to people has a very viable long-term existence.
Live stream commerce, which became quite popular, found its way into everyone’s life through various social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Roposo, etc. These platforms host live video streaming with links from where a consumer can choose to shop the products or services they like. This way of shopping has added a physical feel to online stores, where a consumer can have a discussion with the streamer and get the queries answered in real-time. More and more brands are adding live commerce every day, expanding the options available to customers so they can compare products before making a final decision. Have a look at top 5 shoppable videos.
As in other forms of marketing, brand ambassadors and influencers are crucial in executing proper live streaming commerce. Influencers guide the consumers towards the product and help in creating a market for the same. Social media influencers and creators are already very popular among marketers for their sheer talent of building consumer confidence through engagement and a well-crafted way to deliver the product’s knowledge and make sales.
Personification: High-end live commerce partners provide sellers with the enablement to create branded sessions and virtual showrooms with the required branding for the products, enabling them to build the trust and confidence of consumers.
High-End Call Features: Often, live stream selling requires the seller to engage on live video calls with the prospective buyer. Live streaming partners provide sellers with HD quality call functions and live streaming options. To sell effectively, besides the quality of the product, a live commerce system should be equally qualitative.
Ease of Access: For efficient live commerce streaming and achieving a successful implementation of the same, it becomes prudent to provide ease of access to prospective shoppers looking to join streaming a call or video stream. These can be achieved through a browser-based live stream rather than any specific app. Also, an added feature of the on-demand session can help the live commerce efficacy a long way.
Flexibility: Live stream commerce provides flexibility to consumers by allowing them to co-browse if they want to compare with other products or markets. This helps in the development of trust and confidence in brands’ ability to deliver. In addition, real-time assisted selling experience helps a consumer get the feel of actual physical experience and adds to the whole purpose of using a live commerce system.
Point of sales: An effective live stream commerce requires an effective point of sales system, so the interested queries can be converted in real-time and can work as an effective tool at the hand of ambassadors/influencers of a campaign. The point of sales should go on to checkout during the streaming session itself to ensure the efficient conversion of leads.
Integration: All the major brands today, be it international or local, have a system in place to manage their eCommerce activity. These systems include front-line online selling systems as well. An efficient Live stream partner should be able to provide integration with the existing systems.
In Session POS: Point of sales is the end game for any marketing or brand-building exercise. The same logic follows for live streaming commerce as well. This essentially entails that an efficient live commerce system should provide an efficient point of sales within the streaming session.
CRM: All marketing and sales activities are centered around customers. In today’s world, customer relationship management is the essence of all the companies involved in sales. Following this, CRM integration is an absolute must for a live-streaming system.
Data Analytics: Nowadays, all the metrics for an informed decision with regard to the COVID-19 segment, any activity, sales, marketing, or customer satisfaction, are measured in terms of data. We are bombarded with data at each step of our lives today. An organization’s campaign also produces an enormous amount of data. These Data can be behavioral as well as action-based as well. An efficient live-streaming system should be able to gather these data sets and summaries analytically to become actionable information.
Scheduling: Live streaming sessions have higher possibilities of branching out many more sessions from one session. A scheduling facility in the system can help the influencer or an agent of the brand owner efficiently manage such requests or necessities, which will help in building trust and confidence in consumers.
Apart from scheduling, the same system should provide options of team management that can help an influencer delegate the shoppers to assisted shopping agents and tap the prospective leads to generate higher conversions.
Efficient Reporting: All systems undergo various processes; even live-streaming commerce has numerous agents, processes, timings, delivery mechanisms. A proper reporting system will be a must to filter out the efficient and inefficient parts of the system.
Efficient Checkout: Live streaming commerce aims at generating final sales and conversion of prospective leads developed during the session. The system should have efficient in-session checkout management functionalities, be it on call. Online or through chat, this will ensure effective conversion of the interested shoppers.
Live Stream commerce gained speed during the COVID pandemic, and is becoming the go-to system for all the brands, who have not yet moved towards the wave. Even without COVID, live commerce removes the hassles for many consumers, especially in India, where the reach of reputable brands is restricted due to infrastructure or channeled distribution problems. As seen in China, India too is likely to witness a surge in the live stream commerce segment as predicted by IBEF. Why waste time? Try live stream commerce for free today with Plaza.
