Live Commerce: the advantages of Live Shopping for your e-commerce strategy

Written by Naomi Botting | Nov 25, 2021, 11:00:00 PM

Allowing real-time broadcasting of video presentations or demonstrations of products on online sales sites and social networks, Live Commerce or Live Shopping is a popular and innovative sales technique. Seeing increasing success in the UK and across Europe. How can your brand use it and integrate it effectively into its e-commerce strategy to increase its online sales?

Adaptability is one of the great advantages of Live Commerce: it can be integrated into your online shop, your distributors' sites, on social networks, or on marketplaces. It is possible to broadcast the videos in the form of advertisements, via the Amazon Product Ads system, for example. Prized for its ability to create a lasting relationship of trust with customers and prospects, this sales method allows high-value content to be distributed to a wide audience. Live Commerce offers a more interactive and intuitive customer experience in 3 steps:

Internet users watch a product presentation, see how it works in real-time, and get to find out for themselves its advantages or its main points of interest.
Once it catches their eye, they check the product sheets to learn more about its price or technical performance or contact your sellers directly via a chat solution to ask their questions.
Convinced by the demonstration and/or your pitch, they immediately place an order in just a few clicks, making use of an integrated link.

This revolutionary form of teleshopping offers your customers a radically different online shopping experience, mixing shopping, visual search, and entertainment, and thus helps to humanize the sales process, enhancing your brand image while visually promoting your catalog. The complementarity between an e-commerce site and physical stores is reinforced, bringing to your audience a demonstration comparable to one they might find in-store.

Live Commerce trends in the UK and globally

Experiencing increasing success with brands and marketplaces, Live Shopping is becoming a real social phenomenon. At the global level, specialized research firms are anticipating revenues from Live Shopping that would amount to several hundred billion dollars worldwide in the short term. In China alone, it reportedly generated almost $160 billion in revenue last year! Though it is now well-established in Asia, which has greatly contributed to the popularization of this direct sales technique, the Live Commerce trend is still relatively recent in e-commerce in the UK and Europe, and is still in its early stages, although it continues to gain momentum. Some notable sources of inspiration regarding brands that have recently tried out this new trend by livestreaming their beauty and fashion products include L'Oréal and Tommy Hilfiger. A recent study by Arvato Supply Chain Solutions showed that consumers in Europe are ready for virtual shopping events. 70% of European customers said that they are open to live shopping. Among the reasons cited are practicality and accessibility, the innovative nature of this sales method, and its relevance in the current health crisis. To go further, don't forget to catch the replay of this year's Lengow Day conference " Discover the full potential of live commerce with European brands successfully engaging with their clients":

Live Commerce: for social networks or your e-commerce site?

Live Commerce or Live Shopping started out on social networks, this is no longer necessarily the predominant platform. Nowadays, a large portion of live broadcasts take place on e-commerce sites, through dedicated tools. We can thus distinguish between Social Commerce on networks, and Live Commerce on sales websites. The choice between these different channels depends on your goals; the targets you want to achieve. On your site, you address your existing audience, made up of consumers who already appreciate your productsand who have likely already placed orders with you in the past. On social networks however, you engage withs a much wider audience which needs to be convinced so that viewers will turn into customers. This doesn't involve the same logic. By doing so, it is up to you to choose the streaming channel that suits you based on the product and service offered, and your expectations and practices. You can also opt for a live multicast, both on the site and social networks, if you want to reach as many viewers as possible, for example by integrating the video from the social network on your site, a feature that most platforms offer these days. If you decide instead to broadcast your Live Commerce exclusively on your online shop, that's no problem! There are many software solutions that provide companies with all the necessary tools to create and broadcast live and interact with their audience: Caast.tv, Quidol, Spockee, and more. These services are often even more interesting, because they have attractive features that are not always found on social networks, such as the integration of product lists with live videos to view technical characteristics and rates during viewing, as well as several payment options. In addition, some software that is specialized in Live Commerce allows you to include surveys and quizzes. Another major difference between Social commerce and Live Commerce on your e-commerce site concerns presenters. For demonstrations on social networks, it is customary to use influencers to host the show, in order to appeal to an audience that does not yet know the brand. For demonstrations on the e-commerce site, on the other hand, this task will instead be entrusted to some of your employees, your best sellers or communicators. It's a practical option, and most importantly, one that comes at a lower cost.

What can Lengow do to help you?

Lengow, your marketplace feed manager, is naturally making itself a part of the Live Commerce trend, which is growing significantly in the UK and Europe. We bring you several practical solutions to assist you:

Smooth and simplified integration with any software services (such as Spockee and Caast.tv) that you may use, to allow you to fully enjoy the benefits of this sales technique by minimizing your investments.
The creation of a personalized feed thanks to our internal application "My Custom Channel" to develop your own 100% customizable structures, without having to go through a technical service, thereby strengthening your autonomy.
Assistance in the distribution of your products via our "Segments" service to choose the most relevant products within your catalog, according to the criteria that you consider most useful (performance, season).
Optimized product sheets (by reworking the titles, descriptions, images, and customer reviews) to present quality data, and especially to design impactful pages that will be accessible during presentations.

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