Making E-commerce more effective with Live Stream Shopping and Real-time Engagement

Making E-commerce more effective with Live Streaming and Real-time Engagement ---- 6 min read

The Facebook Page “Like” you just got or the message your live chat just received, every activity where a customer is interacting with you in some way is engagement. It’s proven beyond doubt that deeply engaged shoppers buy more, promote more, and demonstrate more loyalty towards a brand which in return leads to growth of an Ecommerce Store.

Traditional online e-commerce which was in huge demand once is now failing terribly because of lack of customer engagement leading to decreases in customer retention. This is making e-commerce stores look for capabilities that provide meaningful, real-time engagement with buyers.

Let us look at this guide for e-commerce live streaming and why it is overshadowing traditional online e-commerce:

Lack of personal touch

With online shopping, you cannot check how a shoe looks when work, or a tablecloth looks on a table. Sometimes no matter how good the product is explained on the website, unless and until you go through product demonstration in real-time you will still have trust issues.

This means inspecting a product before purchasing is not possible in this type of shopping. E-commerce livestreaming eliminates the issue by showcasing the product in real-time.

Read More: How Ecommerce Brands can provide Product Experiences that convert to Sales.

User engagement is NIL

In case of traditional online shopping, sales assistants cannot shower personal attention on customers and give a complete demonstration of a product. The ability to speak to a sales assistant about your needs and issues is still much better guidance than reading product descriptions and making your decision. 

Engaging with visitors with e-commerce livestreaming when they need help increases the chance of visitors being converted into buyers. This is not possible with traditional online shopping.

Recorded and biased reviews

One of the biggest problems with traditional online shopping is that you have no guarantee of product quality.

These sites can have recorded reviews which can be misleading. In many cases, reading mixed reviews confuses buyers, and they do not trust those reviews unless they see the product working live. Livestream e-commerce can facilitate this efficiently and effectively. 

Non-engaging content

While browsing through an online shopping website, it is quite often that you get flooded with similar or even duplicate product descriptions. Even if you click on your product, you find the content of the product description to be non-engaging, non-informative, and boring.

Many e-commerce sites have thousands of items in multi-level disorganized category pages. These category pages contain a number of products with repetitive content. Too many irrelevant product choices, unstructured, or useless information on the website can make the whole shopping experience boring.

Furthermore, when a user types in the keywords in search bar, an array of items appear in search results. Now, sorting and filtering out the products that the buyer is looking for in terms of price range, gender means, brand-wise, etc makes online shopping burdensome and not effortless, , increasing the use-cases of livestream e-commerce.

Read More: How to use Live Stream Shopping to improve Purchase Intentions of Buyers.

Restricted influencer and advocacy marketing

Influencer and Advocacy Marketing is one of the most credible ways to build brand awareness, enhance conversions, and establish brand authority. With traditional online shopping, influencer marketing gets restricted as influencers can only market for products on their personal social media accounts.

Slows down decision making 

With traditional online shopping, customers have to buy a product without seeing actually how it looks. The images of a product are sometimes deceptive, the colour or the print appearance in real may not match with the images.

Having all these points in mind while shopping online delays the decision making of a buyer. Hence conversion rate becomes super slow.

Customization of products is not possible

Products that require customization like a gold ring or spectacles are difficult to buy from an online shopping site. It is difficult for buyers to understand if the desired customization would look good, or is even possible.

Live streaming e-commerce can display how the product looks on different people, places, and textures to resolve such concerns.

One way communication

Because of one-way communication (buyer to seller), buyers can feel that they are not being listened to and they are not being valued. This also makes them see a product from a specific perspective. One way communication hence can be a hurdle in building relationships among buyers and sellers.

Furthermore,sellers cannot guide customers on products and the lack of face-to-face communication often causes customers to doubt suppliers’ authenticity

All these shortcomings can make online shopping boring and can turn off potential customers.

Read More: How to Choose Products to Promote in Live Shopping Shows.

Introduction to Live Stream Shopping

Live streaming commerce is an engaging medium that grabs audience’s attention and allows businesses to deliver compelling and engaging content while offering fun factors and convenient purchasing experiences.

The combination of streaming video, real-time engagement, and e-commerce promises to revolutionize the retail industry and consumer shopping habits as it has the power to expand the viewership of an event attended by hundreds into the millions.  Livestream e-commerce has the potential to reach audiences of unprecedented scale for product demos, fashion shows, flash sales, live announcements, and much more. Live streaming services thus allow you to access a broader viewer base and customize the viewing experience to meet the requirements of diverse customers. To sum up we can say that Live shopping not only boosts sales but can also be an effective marketing tool.

Live stream shopping being a sales enabler promises to change the face of e-commerce today by closing the gaps between buyers and sellers. Additionally, by leveraging the appropriate Content Strategies you can create the most enjoyable and valuable live stream experience for your buyers.

Introduction to Live Stream Shopping

To sum up

Let us quickly compare traditional e-commerce and live streaming e-commerce and come up with a conclusion.

Traditional e-commerceLive streaming e-commerce
  
Buyers can see a product from a narrow perspectiveBuyers can experience a product live, and hear about it from an expert.
Can have biased reviews and duplicate contentCan have live comments and real reviews being shared during product demonstration 
User engagement is NILUser engagement is part of the whole process. In addition to Live Video and Chat, other gamified and personalized experiences can also be added.
Products are explained via text descriptionProducts are explained via text, visual, as well as verbal description
With traditional online shopping decision making is slow as buyers can have trust issuesLive Streaming Commerce helps with better decision making and also places a sense of urgency in order completion via flash deals, and other selling techniques
Boring and non-engagingCreates curiosity and sense of realism
One way communication between buyers & sellers can lead to trust issuesTwo-way communication maintains transparency between buyers and sellers which leads to a better customer experience 

Customer engagement is the emotional bridge that connects a customer to a brand and live shopping is successfully bridging this gap by being more translucent with customers and escalating the joy of shopping. Live shopping is thus gaining huge popularity and is sure to transform e-commerce in 2021 and beyond.

If your e-commerce store isn’t hitting its sales target and is not leading to customer engagement then Channelize.io Live Streaming Solution for Commerce can be a game-changer for you. 

Our solution aims to address all the shortcomings of traditional online shopping by offering a differentiated shopping experience to consumers through real-time product demonstrations, instant communication, and by adding new pleasures in online shopping. Furthermore, with the right promotional strategies, you can convert viewers to customers and achieve your business goals.

To know more about our Live Stream E-commerce Platform, feel free to book a Free DEMO with us.

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