Live shopping technology: how Ukrainian companies can increase conversion by up to 30%

"Holy heavens! Girls, fly," a Chinese guy with painted lips exclaims to the cosmetics battery.

Thus begins almost every live broadcast on the Taobao streaming platform, hosted by influencer Li Jiaqi, known in the beauty community as Lipstick Brother. Last year, he set a record — in 12 hours of streaming , he sold cosmetics for $ 2 billion.

Unrealistic numbers, you say. But it's true. Such is the new world, the world of live commerce or live shopping. This is the latest invention in the e-commerce segment, which allows you to significantly increase the performance of online retail, regardless of geography.

For Ukrainian entrepreneurs working during the crisis caused by the war, this trend is a chance to expand their audience inside and outside the country and increase revenues. When conventional tools don't work or don't work as efficiently as they used to, live commerce can attract consumers and support sales.

In the spring of 2022, we at JMIND launched our own product for live shopping — Infinite. I'll talk about how the technology is useful for online sellers and why the usual live sales platforms cut efficiency. And learn more about live commerce and its capabilities at MMR MRKTNG MRTH on October 27.

Return the spirit of pre-online shopping

How did it make it possible that Chinese bloggers broke the ceiling with live sales? In fact, everything is not so difficult.

The main factor in the success of live commerce is the deep cultural rooting of shopping. The acquisition of new products is not only an attempt to get the necessary thing, but also a way of communication and socialization.

When shopping began to drift online, it stopped providing users with a full-fledged purchasing experience. It was not so easy to talk with the seller about the quality of the goods, personal experience of use, and just about life.

The situation changed in 2016, when Alibaba launched the Taobao Live streaming service. He offered viewers a novelty — a mixture of streaming and e-commerce. Streams on Taobao Live look like shows during which famous presenters entertain viewers. They also answer questions in the chat and talk about products that can be purchased immediately in one click.

The Chinese have returned the features of traditional shopping to online trading: the possibility of communication and greater involvement of the buyer in the process of choosing a product.  Streams have brought e-commerce to a new level of popularity. The value of the liveshopping market this year may reach $500 billion.

Airing on social media is not exactly live commerce

The trend of "live shopping" has been picked up by many Ukrainian brands. The most common and already familiar option is broadcasts on social networks.

Social networks have advantages. For example, they provide a ready-made free streaming tool that can reach an existing audience. But there is a "but." Most social networks simply broadcast a picture, from the interactive they provide only reactions and comments. And by themselves, videos that talk about the quality and benefits of goods are not yet full-fledged live commerce.

Instead, more and more companies in Western Europe and the U.S. are adding live sales functionality to their site. A striking example is the German leader in perfumery and cosmetics — Douglas.

In 2020, the retailer launched a live section on its website. In 2021, more than 1.2 million people watched direct ethers on the site, and the conversion was sometimes 50%. Today, the live section is available on Douglas sites in Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Romania, Poland.

Another example is the American chain of hypermarkets, department stores and grocery stores Walmart. At Walmart Shop Live , you can buy anything live from a coffee machine to a lego constructor.

Most e-commerce sites that have added live shopping functionality to their site note a significant increase in customer conversion during live events. According to research , the average conversion rate in e-commerce is 2.86%. That is, out of hundreds of visitors, only three will make a purchase. Videos of "unpacking", which are often used by trading platforms, add a few percent at the expense of an additional channel, and will not make much weather, even if they are broadcast in real time.  

Instead, live shopping allows you to communicate with the seller in a live chat and show product icons with active links directly in the video stream, which can be used to immediately go to the product order page. Conversion in this way can increase tenfold — up to 30%.

Streams without intermediaries

Today, many Ukrainian retailers make live streams on Instagram or Facebook. However, by using these platforms, companies are losing the opportunities provided by a specialized service for live shopping. For example, Infinite will help:

• To reach the maximum audience with the function of multi-streaming — at the same time broadcast on the company's website and in social networks. Instead, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok don't allow you to stream the event to other venues.  
• Manage traffic. Social networks do not redirect traffic to your platform. That is, the viewer can see only the products that are presented on the stream. With Infinite, you give users the opportunity to buy both from the social media stream and directly from the e-commerce platform, where a much larger product catalog is presented. Thanks to the floating player built on the site, buyers can watch the stream and at the same time view sections of the site. This convenient format allows you to significantly increase the time spent on the site and again increase sales.  
• Use a recorded stream. If the moderator of the stream is an entrepreneur, he will be able to save the stream on his website, and all interested in the products can at any time receive the necessary information about them in the question-and-answer mode. At the same time, the recorded stream can be downloaded and cut into short clips, which are appropriate to post on product pages and share on social networks.
• Get analytics from the stream. Platforms like Infinite allow you to see information about the products that are most often clicked on, or events to which buyers react more vividly. Social networks do not provide such information.

You can get a month of free access to all the features of the Infinite service here.

Not all live commerce solutions are equally useful

The main factor for small and medium-sized e-commerce projects is the convenience of using the service: they can not spend money on a specialist who should monitor the operation of the software.

It is for these reasons that top solutions for live shopping are created in the form of SaaS platforms that do not need to be installed and maintained. For example, our support team integrates the code into the customer's website in a few minutes, after which he gets the opportunity to shoot high quality using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) or from his smartphone through the Infinite application. At the same time, we have got rid of the restrictions inherent in other platforms, and we allow the first two broadcasts to be held for free.

Live commerce is worthy of attention from Ukrainian companies, because it opens a new page in our and world e-commerce and can be a good anti-crisis solution. The segment is developing rapidly — and this is also a plus, because the competition of platforms for "live shopping" generates new features and profitable offers for sellers. It remains to follow trends, new developments — and try.

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