In September 2022 SAP launched a new startup accelerator program focused on the “Future of Retail and Consumer Products” called SAP.iO Foundry Paris. 12 international startups were selected from hundreds of potential candidates to join the program by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers and investment funds.
Smartzer was lucky enough to be one of the selected businesses with a perfect fit for helping brands improve digital customer experiences in the post pandemic world.
The other selected companies were Sorga Technologies, Arianee, LiveBuy, Collect ID, Diakse, YSR, Repl
ika Software, SmartPixels, Priceloop, Foodetective and Sopreme.
“SAP.iO is committed to accelerating startups to help customers run at their best. For this program, our focus is on retail, addressing the traceability and authenticity of products as well as offering consumers an improved and differentiating purchasing experience”, said Odilia von Zitzewitz, SAP.iO Foundry Paris. “We are very proud to accompany this new class of startups and help them scale their innovations.”
Over the course of five months the selected startups received mentoring from SAP France executives, exposure to SAP technologies and products as well as business development opportunities. The program was run through a mix of in person and remote activities.
The final demo day where each of the startups presented their solutions for a broad range of opportunities across the retail sector, was held in Paris. The event offered a great opportunity for the SAP teams to discover the solutions and to
One of the big milestones of the program was to have Smartzer available through the SAP App store which is now live through the link here. Smartzer’s interactive and shoppable video tool as well as the ability for brands to build live shopping events is now available to all SAP customers through a simple integration.
In addition to offering a highly interactive customer experience, interactive videos and live shopping events also enable brands to access new data on customer preferences and their content performance. This adds another layer of benefits offered by shoppable video technology, enabling brands to drive impact beyond the original video view alone.
Live shopping is an emerging e-commerce trend that blends live video streaming with online shopping. It allows retailers to showcase their products in real-time while interacting with potential customers, creating an engaging and personalised shopping experience.
In recent years, live shopping has gained significant popularity, spreading rapidly across the globe. Increasing numbers of brands are utilising it as a new way to connect with customers.
How Does Live Shopping Work?
Live shopping involves a host or influencer showcasing products in real-time through live video streaming. These hosts can be experts, influencers, or brand ambassadors who may have a large following on social media platforms. They can use their expertise, charisma, and influence to create an engaging and interactive shopping experience.
The live stream typically takes place on a social media platform or directly on a brand’s site, the latter streamlining the purchase journey. During the stream, viewers can interact with the host by leaving comments or asking questions. The host can respond in real-time, providing additional information about the product, demonstrating how it works, or even taking requests from viewers.
When live shopping experiences are hosted on a brand’s site, customers can add products to cart directly from the live stream, using an integrated shopping feature. This allows them to make purchases in only a few clicks, creating a seamless and convenient shopping experience.
Benefits of Live Shopping
Live shopping offers several benefits for retailers and customers alike. For retailers, it provides a unique way to showcase products and connect with potential customers. It also allows them to create a sense of urgency, as viewers may feel more compelled to make a purchase during the live stream.
For customers, live shopping provides an immersive and interactive shopping experience. They can see the product in action, ask questions, and get instant feedback from the host. This can help them make more informed purchasing decisions and feel more confident about their choices. This encourages a notable fall in return rates.
Additionally, live shopping can be a fun and entertaining way to discover new products and brands. The hosts often provide valuable insights and recommendations, making it easier for viewers to find products that meet their needs and preferences.
Finally, live shopping can be an inexpensive and flexible way for brands to engage with their customers. A simple set up, mobile phone and a ring light is all that is needed to create a clear, engaging and professional experience for viewers. Brands can go live from anywhere, at any time, at minimal cost.
Challenges of Live Shopping
While live shopping has many benefits, there are also some challenges that retailers need to consider.
One challenge is the need for a skilled host or influencer. The host needs to be knowledgeable about the product and brand, as well as charismatic and engaging on camera. However, finding the right host is not always the difficult process it can be made out to be. Many brands use their own employees, who can quickly pick up the skills required to engage their audience as they begin to stream regularly.
Secondly, live shopping requires an investment of time and resources. Retailers need to plan and execute the live stream effectively, promoting their events and managing customer inquiries. This can be challenging at first, but after the first few shows are complete, and a regular schedule is implemented, the process becomes smooth and straightforward for all those involved. Smartzer, a dedicated live shopping platform, allows you to track sales data from your individual streams, making it simple to see how the shows can justify their investment.
Conclusion
Live shopping is an exciting and innovative e-commerce trend that is transforming the way retailers connect with customers. By combining live video streaming with online shopping, retailers can create engaging and personalised shopping experiences that help them stand out from the competition. However, live shopping also comes with its own set of challenges. These can be overcome over the course of starting out with live shopping, leading to a simple and straightforward process. As live shopping continues to grow in popularity, retailers will need to adapt and innovate in order to stay ahead of the curve.
Interested in learning more about live shopping? Book in a demo with Smartzer today.
Until recently, video content was seen as an investment where performance KPIs were vanity metrics such as the number of views and vague measurements around brand awareness. These limited success metrics make it difficult to understand true value driven in terms of sales and the ability to improve future videos based on performance.
Given the huge investment brands are allocating to video content creation, new interactive and shoppable video formats provide an incredible new opportunity to understand in-depth analytics data from videos and live streams. This data can be used for performance reporting purposes as well as understanding creative insights for improved future content creation.
One of the most important metrics for measuring core return on investment (ROI) is through the concrete sales that have been generated. Of course, the way people shop is very complicated, and getting to a conversion includes a large number of different factors. Experts suggest a range from anything between 20 to 500 or more touch points are needed to get to a conversion. Additionally, factors such as category, sales cycle, price, brand perception, brand loyalty, consumer demographics, etc influence the number of interactions a brand's consumer has to have before making a purchase.
The number of different touchpoints with your brand will be essential for sales to take place, however, no matter what you are selling, the importance of quality touchpoints greatly outweighs the focus on quantity.
Shoppable and interactive video formats, such as shoppable videos and live shopping, have been proven to provide high-quality touchpoints which drive both direct conversion as well as attributed conversion.
There are different types of sales which can be used to understand ROI from shoppable videos and live shopping.
Direct sales within a session 💲 This is revenue generated as a result of a direct journey from a viewer of a shoppable video or a live shopping event clicking on a product, selecting their size/colour preferences, adding the product to their shopping cart, and checking out. This is the revenue channel which is the simplest to track. Depending on the tracking logic set up by a specific e-commerce site, the revenue generated in this way may be lost if the user adds other items to their shopping cart after the items are added from the shoppable videos. Hence, using this metric alone will provide a very niche use case for revenue generation.
Additional items within the session 🛍 Shoppable videos and live shopping events can often be a source of inspiration which start a shopping journey where the products purchased may not necessarily be the exact products that were showcased in the video itself. For instance, there may be a pair of trousers featured in the video where the user clicks through to that pair of trousers and sees the jacket which is recommended for the look, and adds this jacket to their shopping basket. This is again revenue generated as a result of the shoppable video or a live shopping event and can be tracked against shoppers who interacted with the video.
Additional sales in a later session 🕐 Live shopping events in particular try to encourage shopping within the same session by offering time-sensitive discounts and deals. However, in reality, we know that most shoppers don’t make impulse purchases, especially for higher-ticket items. They can discover products through shoppable videos and live shopping events, think about them for a time, and then decide to make a purchase. This cannot of course be tracked for all customers, but where this is possible, it is very useful to also understand this broader impact within a 14-30 day window from watching the shoppable video or live shopping event.
Indirect sales through another channel 🔀 In addition to the sales happening on the same channel where the shoppable videos or live shopping originally existed, there will of course be a much broader and difficult-to-measure impact cross-channel. For instance, a shopper may have seen products in a live shopping event and later purchase these in-store, or receive retargeting ads on social media and make a final purchase through this channel.
When measuring ROI for video content, analytics tracking can be set up to gather concrete data for the first 3 types of sales. The last impact is harder to measure and needs to be added on as an additional consideration as a “bonus”.