What is Live Commerce?

Live commerce is a term used to describe the usage of various live streaming features to provide ecommerce services. It is often considered to be the next big thing in ecommerce as video streaming capabilities can bring online shops as close as possible to physical ones.

With the advent of various live broadcast providers, adding such capabilities to your website and shop is easier than ever. Providing live video shopping properly, however, is quite complicated, especially since the approach is rather new and information on the internet is lacking.

Live commerce defined

Live commerce has three essential factors - video streaming, online shopping, and audience interaction. Some of these are self-explanatory such as live streaming as otherwise no live commerce would be possible.

One thing that many people miss out on is the audience interaction part. Live commerce is as much about having the right products as about the personality behind the camera. Judging from other areas where live streaming has been popular (e.g., gaming), personality drives conversions.

As such, the person who is streaming commerce within your shop should have several features to maximize conversions. They should be knowledgeable about products and services as many people will come to the retail live event to simply ask questions before purchasing something. Not having answers will significantly and negatively affect customer experience.

Additionally, anyone who participates in live commerce should be at least somewhat entertaining. Some people will tune in not only because they’re interested in the products, but also because they seek some form of video-based fun customer experience. With a good personality, however, these leads can be converted into customers.

Finally, the person running the live streaming ecommerce event should interact with the audience as much as possible. That means answering questions, jokes, and any other comments in the chat.

What are the benefits of live video shopping?

There is one key benefit from which many others stem when considering live commerce. Many businesses already know the value of having multiple channels for marketing and sales purposes. Live commerce simply adds one more channel and a highly efficient one at that.

Luckily, streaming services are no longer expensive or require highly professional equipment. So, live commerce is now possible for nearly any business, large or small. With the proper live commerce setup, they can harness these benefits:

1. Sales acceleration. Live commerce significantly reduces the average duration of the customer journey. Potential leads can find all the information they want by simply asking questions during the live commerce event instead of having to email or look around the entire website.
2. Impulse buying. It’s a lot easier to hype someone up to make a purchase if they’re interacting with a person. Live commerce gives businesses the opportunity to create and build hype around products and, as such, encourage impulse buying.
3. Better engagement. Live commerce recreates the experience people have shopping in real life, but with extra benefits. They may participate from the comfort of their own home and ask questions without being prompted themselves.
4. Brand awareness. Live commerce is currently still considered highly innovative. Your company could be one of the first in the industry running live commerce events, which would also attract additional attention from customers simply for being innovative.

There are even more benefits associated with live commerce, such as the ability to showcase products better than any static images could and the ability to share experiences among sellers and customers, but the ones outlined above are the primary ones. As the practice of live commerce is still not widely explored, businesses are still uncovering benefits and advantages.

How to get started with live streaming

Getting started with live commerce is quite easy as both equipment and software is now readily available. Companies like SnapCall provide a complete software for live commerce, allowing companies to get all the necessities in one place.

Equipment is also quite accessible. While professional live commerce streams should be done with high video quality cameras and microphones, for businesses just starting out, mid-range equipment will do just fine. In fact, many of the businesses will be able to create high quality live commerce streams without spending thousands of dollars.

The hardest part, unfortunately, is finding the right person to run the live commerce streams. They have to be entertaining, comfortable in front of the camera, and know the products inside-out for them to be a perfect fit. Finding such a person internally might be challenging, especially for smaller companies.

As such, it’s often recommended to run a few test live commerce streams before scheduling a real one. Many issues can happen during live streams, so ensuring that the set up, the person, and equipment is all working properly is essential.

Additionally, companies should create regular, scheduled live commerce events. These should be marketed through channels such as email or tickers in the website to attract attention. Running live commerce streams randomly is unlikely to garner success.

Other than that, all live commerce streams will be rather similar. The person running the live commerce stream should have many products on hand (or a specific category if the event is dedicated to something special), be ready to answer questions, crack jokes, and direct the audience to product pages.