If you run an ecommerce venture, then you might have heard of livestream shopping. And if you run a successful ecommerce venture, then you’re probably already doing it. WMV Productions, a company offering sales and marketing videos along with other video production services, say that making effective live stream videos (and, of course, hosting them in as many places as possible) represents some of the most engaging video marketing around. The reason for this is simple: customers can connect far more easily to something that is happening right now. Why? Because if they don’t, they’ll miss it!
Accordingly, live streams are something you should be engaging in as an ecommerce site. There are many things you can potentially live stream, from product tutorials to a typical day at your company and something completely unrelated to your product, like a live music show with which your brand has sponsored. That’s all up to you, but the marketing potential of live streaming is undoubted.
Enter Livestream Shopping
As mentioned, live streaming is something that you should be doing – and probably already are. If you don’t do it, you risk falling behind the pack. Video marketing for ecommerce today is intimately related to internet culture, and nobody needs any telling how fast that moves. True to form then, even live streaming is sailing towards new horizons and is pretty much on the cusp of the next thing. This thing is live streaming shopping.
To give the most concise definition, live stream shopping is a new information technology that gives customers the ability to purchase things directly from the video – while you’re live streaming it. So, how does this work?
Livestream shopping incorporates a few communication technologies in order to make this feasible. The first is, of course, live stream content. There is also two-way communication, which can take the form of familiar video conferencing technology or a chat box, which can send alerts when a customer has decided to buy something. You can think of livestream shopping as something like QVC meets social media.
The Benefits of Live Stream Shopping
Livestream shopping is sure to become more common in the future than it currently is. The potential is certainly there, and there are a range of benefits for both retailers and customers alike. Here are some of them:
Potential for Larger Audiences
If you think of your livestream as a store, then it’s the biggest store in the world. Theoretically, you can invite as many people as you like to your livestream, and it’s also possible to leave it open once in progress, allowing people to join in and disconnect as they wish. This feature of live streaming also gives you the potential to monitor, in real time, your performance.
Real-time Engagement
One of the big draw backs of most ecommerce sites is the absence of any real rapport between you and the customer. Not so with livestream shopping. Customers can speak to you and you to them, which is pretty much as close to the real shopping experience as you can get. Customers can also chat to each other. The potential of spreading brand awareness and a solid customer base here is huge.
Impulse Buying
Quite simply if you do livestream shopping well, you can sell more. This is because the potential for impulse buying – and maybe even not being beaten to the punch – is much greater in a live stream. And there is also the effect of customers seeing other individual’s buying to consider as well.
Livestream shopping is well set to become the next massive ecommerce trend. Get in now, and you can ride that wave to success.