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Live stream shopping has increased its popularity within the last several years and it is not planning to stop any time soon. Forbes has reported this one-of-a-kind interactive experience to be one of the biggest trends in 2023 as brands look to recover from the overall decline in e-commerce in 2022.
Consumers are spending more time on the internet than ever before and therefore digital awareness is growing rapidly. That’s why this interactive experience has been onboarded by many brands worldwide, making it the new go-to content strategy.
What does livestream shopping entail? You might be thinking this if you still need to become more familiar with the term. Live shopping is an emerging e-commerce trend that blends live video streaming with online shopping. It allows brands to showcase their products in real time while interacting with potential customers, creating an engaging and personalized shopping experience.
The main objective of this interactive experience is to provide consumers with an immersive and interactive piece of content, allowing them to ask questions and buy products during the livestream shopping event.
Livestream shopping has proved it is a great way to not only interact with your existing audience but to grow it through this interactive experience.
When creating a livestream shopping event, the first thing to bear in mind is the brand’s existing audience. What type of content do they want to see, who would they like this content to be delivered from, and what is going to be the tone of the overall interactive experience. These are criteria any brand can answer based on their studies of their public target audience.
Live stream shopping is a great way to get closer to your existing audience and give them an interactive experience they can remember your brand for. Additionally, livestream shopping can give that existing audience the chance to talk with whoever is behind their go-to brand, or their favorite influencer.
Alternatively, livestream shopping can achieve incredible results when it comes to reaching new audiences. This one-of-a-kind interactive experience drives curious and innovative people to the landing page with the livestream shopping event to play around with the elements of the interactive experience.
Do not get fooled by this kind of wander-online journey. This is sometimes what converts best for some brands.
First of all, how would we define brand awareness? We like to say brand awareness is what helps you make people aware of your brand and what you have to offer, so you can gain their trust and influence their decision-making process, in order to get more sales, faster.
This interactive experience gives brands a beautiful space to talk more in-depth about their brand. Whether this is how a product was launched, the brand history, or the why of the brand values, livestream shopping gives them an amazing opportunity to further explain any topic to their audience and hence increase brand awareness.
In case anyone reading this blog wouldn’t think highly enough of brand awareness, let me tell you 77% of people refer to certain items by brand names, even if the product is from a different brand. Additionally, a third of consumers already have a brand in mind when they go shopping.
Livestream shopping massively contributes to increasing brand awareness and closing the bridge between the brand and its customers.
Smartzer defines engagement as the percentage of viewers who have clicked on any of the interactive elements of the livestream shopping event. Therefore we could say the engagement is part of the audience who, besides watching the livestream shopping content, is playing around with the interactive experience and its elements.
Livestream shopping boosts this Key Performance Indicator. Giving the audience the opportunity to press the like button as much as they can, as well as to comment whilst they can purchase it is a game changer.
Thanks to these interactive elements, viewers can ask questions to the host, regarding the product, and any other specifics. On the other hand, the Host can answer their audience in real-time making the interactive experience even more immersive. Livestream shopping content has reported an average engagement rate of 40%.
All of the features mentioned above make livestream shopping a highly engaging format where potential customers can feel heard and valued by their favorite brand while living an interactive experience.
At Smartzer, we have seen livestream shopping make 8X ROI. This is thanks to features such as instant add-to-cart where users can click on the product being featured, select the desired size, and add it to the cart all without leaving the interactive experience itself.
These features making the purchase journey so easy and immediate combined with the confidence of seeing a product and its functionality live, create the best scenario to spread a FOMO feeling amongst the audience and drive them towards a more immediate purchasing journey than any other content.
If we, on top of the add-to-cart functionality, would provide our audience with a discount code, the chances of generating a great number of sales through this interactive experience go over the roof.
All the benefits above are wonderful you might think, but how much does this actually cost when it comes down to money and time? We will break this down for you now.
In order to do livestream shopping you can build the technology in-house, or what’s more recommended and the choice of most brands, subscribe to an interactive platform like Smartzer.
These platforms have different plans to create interactive experiences that can easily adapt to any brand’s size. They start from 999$/month in the case of Smartzer with the Growth plan on our Shopify App.
Time is our most valuable resource and also our company’s. Livestream shopping can be as high-production, and hence costly, as any company would like.
Having said that, the most effective livestream shopping is the most natural one. This is because what the audience rewards most in this interactive experience are authenticity and spontaneity.
Hosts need to keep the audience engaged at every second, and one of the most effective ways of doing this is by setting a natural and spontaneous tone throughout the livestream shopping event so viewers can empathize with whoever is selling the products and therefore trust them to purchase them.
Livestream shopping has multiple benefits for both the brand and the audience. Being able to see the products’ functionality live whilst being able to interact with other members of the same brand community is highly valued by online consumers.
Alternatively, from a brand perspective, there is no other interactive experience that can bring closer the community with its brand than livestream shopping. Additionally, having features such as instant add-to-cart can make this interactive experience highly profitable.
Fortunately, for those who were not familiar with this kind of content, this is only the beginning. The US livestream shopping market is estimated to be worth $68 billion by 2026.
If you have had any thoughts throughout this blog that your company should consider this interactive experience, do not hesitate to contact us and book a demo here!
