- Sep 22, 2021
This new social shopping format allows brands and retailers to make BIG sales in real-time. But the shoppable technology's reception has been 50:50.
While some brands are jumping on live stream shopping trend, others are doubting its effectiveness and questioning whether the novelty will wear off.
Let us break down the key aspects of live stream shopping that make it a winning and attractive format for brands.
LIVE SHOPPING CREATES AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRANDS AND CUSTOMERS
2020 and 2021 starved us socially with brands feeling the pressure of not being able to reach customers in bricks and motor stores. Thankfully, advances in technology meant that brands were able to sell successfully online.
Live stream shopping platforms offered a life saving solution to brands bringing them together with customers in real-time experiences....
Chat bars allow viewers to ask stream hosts questions creating a personalised way to shop online
Bespoke, ticketed events created a sense of exclusivity for customers encouraging impulse purchases
By harnessing the power of the influencer, brands posed key industry figures as hosts to increase customer confidence and trust in their brand
STREAMING COMMERCE SHORTENS THE PATH TO PURCHASE
You can demonstrate your products clearly using video. Whether this is showing how it is made, how it is worn or how it works, you can display to your customer exactly why your product is the answer.
Clickable popups to featured products within the stream direct the viewer to sizing information, pricing, colour options and more. These popups provide immediate answers to questions alongside the call to action button to buy. This moves the viewer quickly down the purchase funnel and boosts conversion rate massively with the possibility to measure this metric with tracking links.
LIVE SHOPPING BY MARKET: CHINA, EUROPE AND THE US
China's live stream shopping industry is the largest in the world, set to be worth $239 billion by the end of this year. This growth is not slowing down as it is estimated to grow by 27% annually up until 2025. In fact, in 2020 streaming commerce accounted for 10% of China's overall e-commerce market.
In the US, Amazon Live was re-launched in 2019. The platform features key brands like Covergirl and Neutrogena. Not only this, but Amazon's Twitch has also started to sell products via streams after integrating a check-out system in 2020.
TikTok recently announced a new partnership with Shopify that could see the platform support live stream shopping in the near future.
Globally, the live shopping industry grew 45% between March and April 2020, showing a 99% increase from the previous year.
HOW CAN I BUILD A SUCCESSFUL LIVESTREAM?
Creating your own live shop experience is easy with the right platform. Smartzer's shoppable live stream platform allows brands to easily create seamless, state-of-the-art broadcasts. But there are some other things to bare in mind...
Choose the right online and in-person location. Place your stream where your customers can find it. For example, if your engagement comes from your website you can embed on a webpage, or if your customers are more vocal on social share across social media and email newsletters. Make sure you broadcast from a nice, aesthetic area with good WiFi.
Time the stream intelligently. Choose to broadcast when your viewers will be able to watch and make sure your stream is not too short.
Build in house expertise. You don't always need to hire influencers or expensive production teams as hosts. Sometimes your own brand representatives know your product the best, you could even film effectively from a high quality smart phone.
Introducing you to the greatest live shopping experiences hosted by brands in 2021.
With live stream shopping picking up speed in the world of video Ecommerce, there have been many thrilling examples that we have seen this year so far. There is no denying that the exclusivity of real-time shopping experiences excites the viewer and drives them to make an impulse purchase.
In this article we will break down some more of the most impressive shoppable live streams to grace the internet over the past few months...
Aldo: Canadian Footwear Takes Live Shopping
Canadian retailer, Aldo, teamed up with celebrity stylist Mimi Cuttrell and LA entertainer Nate Wyatt to deliver a social shopping spectacular. On the stream, the pair shared their favourite style tips on how to wear various shoes and accessories. After hosting a shoppable live stream in the Spring of 2021, Aldo noted a 308% engagement rate and registered 17,000 pageviews on its website in the first five days after the event.
Samsung: Tech Meets Tech in Shoppable Live Stream
Samsung Panama used Smartzer's interactive video platform to deliver a highly successful live shopping experience with exclusive, event-based discount deals. Sales representatives from Samsung demonstrated a variety of products to hundreds of viewers. Customers could communicate with the hosts via a chat bar by giving themselves a nickname. This created a bespoke and personalised shopping experience that replicated the benefits of in person shopping.
Sephora: Facebook Live Fridays
Brand representatives from Sephora have been using Facebook's new feature to sell via live events. Facebook live is being trialed in the US at the moment, but big brands like Sephora and Abercrombe are already taking advantage of the platform. The beauty brand was able to demonstrate a variety of cosmetics in a real-time tutorial, customers could buy straight from links next to the stream.
Clarks: Combining Social Media and Social Live Shopping
Clarks used Smartzer's tool to share their shoppable live stream across their Instagram. Customers could swipe on the Instagram story to be taken to the live stream event. An influencer hosted the stream to encourage viewers to purchase by clicking product popups alongside the stream and in a browsable carousel. The seamless shopping experience directed users to product pages to add the item to their cart.
With live shopping gaining momentum across the globe, the market is set to be worth $24 billion by 2023. Will you follow these examples to sell big in 2021 and beyond?
Unlike standard video, shoppable video can help you track key metrics from your video content marketing to provide a strong ROI.
Shoppable and interactive videos allow the viewer to play a role in the video. They can click on an interactive overlay to bring up popups with product information and a call to action button that can take them to a product display page, or add the item straight to their cart. This helps to provide a direct and personalised way to shop.
As a result of these extra ways to engage, the videos produce stronger metrics that provide a deeper insight into how consumers engage with your content.
Here's a break down of the key metrics produced by interactive video and what they mean for your brand's video content marketing strategy, starting with the basics:
Metric | Description |
Views | Standard and shoppable video both provide information on how many people have pressed play on your video and watched it at the most basic level. |
Clicks | All of the clicks that occur in the video, including clicks on the hotspots and miss-clicks. You can see where people are engaging with your content in your interactive video. |
Interactive views | The number of people who watched and clicked on your shoppable video. You can see how people have engaged at the awareness stage and then clicked to explore your content. |
Click through rate | The percentage of views that resulted in a click through. This includes clicks to view product display pages and add to carts. This means you can track consideration and conversion rates. Video interactivity can actually boost your CTR by up to 10 X more than standard video. |
Interactive view rate | The percentage of people who watched the video and clicked on any of the interactive video elements. You can clearly see from interactive metrics how the viewer is responding to your content. |
Conversion | Shoppable videos allow you to track which products are being added to baskets and who is checking out. It is impossible to track conversion from standard, flat content. |
Product Popularity | Some interactive video platforms show you which products are clicked and added to cart the most. This helps you to track your consumers preferences and see what is trending. |
View Maps | View maps can help you see where your viewer drops off the video. This can help you learn from your content to see what your target market finds the most interesting. |
Click Maps | Click maps show you exactly where your viewer is clicking and interacting with your shoppable video content. You can see which areas are the most popular with viewers. |
Using video interactivity can boost your engagement rates, but it can also allow you to understand your customer's behaviour much more deeply.
You can learn from these key metrics to produce bigger and better shoppable content and revolutionise your video content marketing strategy.
Seeing spectacular, clearly measurable results from video interactivity provides a strong ROI.