Online Shopping in Holiday Season 2021: Is your eCommerce Store Ready? ---- 5 min read

The 2021 Holiday Season is already knocking on the door with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the swarm pullers, being just about a quarter away. 

Many Online Retailers have already started planning and executing strategies to maximize sales in this season. If you haven’t started yet, now is the right time to adopt the right ecommerce technology trends.

In this blog we’re going to share with you new technology trends in e-commerce to help you prepare for the 2021 holiday shopping season. Make sure you get an early start on strategizing after reading this blog so that by the time the holidays are here you can set yourself up for success.

Let’s get started!!

Livestream Shopping is the modern day and improved version of Live Shopping TV channels like QVC and the Home Shopping Network. Live Shopping enables brands to stay closer to shoppers by offering exciting opportunities for product discovery, community formation, witness improved product experiences, and indulge in effective communication. For a world increasingly engaged by video, this is the best way to know your customer, increase average order values and achieve faster business growth.

Thus getting onto such live shopping trends this holiday season can be a game changer for your business!

How to get started with Livestream Shopping?

To begin with live shopping trends like livestream shopping, it is very important to plan and choose the right platform and equipments, prepare accordingly, engage with your audiences and promote your shows.. All this will help you attract the right customers and eventually make the most out of the holiday season. So here is a comprehensive checklist to help you get started with e-commerce technology trends this holiday season.

Choose your Platform

Channelize.io Live Shopping Platform can help brands engage new and existing buyers directly on their website or app with Live as well as Recorded Shopping Shows. Unlike other livestream shopping platforms, our platform allows shoppers to add items to their cart and purchase without needing to leave a shopping show. Furthermore with our platform you can easily measure the KPIs that analyze the behavior of your customers during shopping shows! 

By leveraging the robust components of our Live Video Shopping Platform, store owners can create, run and manage Live Shopping Shows efficiently. In addition to the components for buyer interfaces (API, SDKs & UI Kits), our platform comprises a Production Dashboard for Store Admins and Broadcaster Apps for Broadcasters / Hosts. Thus, the roles and responsibilities of a store admin / producer and a host are completely demarcated. This makes the whole process of hosting a live shopping show a lot easier for brands as well as for hosts.

What’s more?
Live Shopping experiences can be added on all e-commerce platforms, and custom web & mobile apps (with our API, SDKs & UI Kits). For the ones for which we have pre-built integrations available (Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and PrestaShop), getting started is as easy as plug-and-play.

You can easily Install & activate the plugins on their respective platform:
Shopify: https://apps.shopify.com/live-stream-shopping 

WooCommerce: https://wordpress.org/plugins/live-shopping-video-streams/ 

Magento: https://marketplace.magento.com/channelize-liveshopping.html 

PrestaShop: https://addons.prestashop.com/en/support-online-chat/86309-live-shopping-video-streams.html

Choose your Equipment

Once you opt for Channelize.io Livestream Shopping Platform you really don’t have to worry about equipment. The host of your show simply needs to download our Broadcaster App, available for both iOS and Android. A host can be an employee, a staff member or a brand advocate. You can also invite brand ambassadors, influencers or KOL to host your show. They will just need the Broadcaster App to host your live shopping shows.

For a truly successful live shopping show, you will also need an internet connection that’s not only fast but reliable. Our powerful feature, Choose Stream Resolution coupled with the Network Quality Indicator feature in Broadcaster Apps enables hosts to go live from anywhere, and stream effectively.

For a more polished-looking live shopping show you can consider investing in a professional backdrop, like one with your logo, tripod stand, ring light and audio mixer etc. All this can help to brand your shows and give them some visual consistency, which is a particularly good practice if you plan to do a lot of livestream shows in the future.

We are soon rolling out support for OBS too, which will enable use of studio cameras for hosting shows.

Do a Test Run‍

It’s always good to do a test run to make sure everything is fine before you go live. With our Preview Mode Feature host can easily do a test run to prepare for the Live Shopping Show before actually going Live. With this feature a Host can check and set their camera settings, set up beautification filters, or go through the list of products to promote, before going Live. 

Read More: Layla Cosmetics Evolves to a Tech-enabled Beauty Brand via Livestream Shopping Platform

Engage your Audiences

For a live shopping to be successful, audience engagement and the level of interaction are the most important elements. Without an enticing experience the audience might drift off to something else and they won’t even remember they were watching your live shopping show. Hence having a solid strategy can also put you in a good position to engage your audience and ultimately generate more product sales.

You can check out our blog for effective content strategies to make your Live shopping successful.

Promote your Shows

Generating sales is the ultimate goal of hosting Live Shopping Shows. This depends on the number of viewers attending your live shopping show and ultimately purchasing your products. Promoting your livestream shopping shows well can increase your total number of viewers exponentially. Below are some strategies that can help you market your live shopping shows to get the maximum audience. 

Wrapping it up

The best time to increase ecommerce sales in 2021 is coming up. However, success only happens to those who are fully prepared beforehand and follow effective e-commerce technology trends. Live stream shopping is among the most popular and result driven new technology trends in e-commerce today.

We have the experience of working with 800+ Brands across Industries who are embracing and reaping the benefits of adopting Channelize.io Live Shopping Platform. You can read our Client Success Stories to know more.

You can simply email us at info@channelize.io or book a Free DEMO with us to achieve more sales this holiday season.