Ever since the e-commerce industry began, it has not stopped growing. This industry has managed to become the trendiest source of engagement when it comes to shopping. We have landed ourselves in a position where before shopping for anything from anywhere, we spend some lavish time on the internet and make decisions to find the best deal. That’s an obvious activity which we do not forget to practice in a single chance. Live commerce remarks a considerable change concerning the functioning of various retail industries.

What is Live Commerce?

Live commerce, also known as live shopping or live streaming shopping, refers to a form of e-commerce where sellers promote and sell products in real time through live video broadcasts. It combines elements of traditional TV shopping channels with the interactivity and convenience of online shopping.

How does live commerce work?

Live commerce involves a host or influencer showcasing products through a live video stream, while viewers can interact in real time by asking questions, making inquiries, or purchasing products directly from the stream.

Live commerce has gained significant popularity in recent years, especially in countries like China and South Korea. It has also gained traction in other parts of the world, with many brands and retailers adopting live commerce strategies to engage with consumers and drive sales.

What makes e-commerce a trend?

The e-commerce industry has always been caught bringing up ideas that catch the eye of attraction for consumers. All that the companies need is to do something exciting as well as attractive for its end consumer. The companies are emerging and adapting a lot in bringing innovation to their sales strategies. As we have kept e-commerce in knowledge for a decade or more, we have seen transitions in their way of approaching the consumer community.

Technology plays an important role in the upbringing of this industry. Research states that the e-commerce industry in China, in the last few years has increased its customer background with its change in strategies. It was believed that the touch of personal selling on e-commerce made them achieve more than the targets. Chinese companies like Alibaba (Taobao), and Vipshop have recently come up with the idea of live streaming sales, or simply live e-commerce.

Swift in the past years with live stream commerce sales

To be on point, livestream commerce has brought an amazing drift in the e-commerce industry in the past years. The companies started sales with live streaming on their applications and claimed a rise of 30% in their customer engagement.

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Swift in the past years with live-stream sales

The idea was to generate engagement. Live streaming selling or Live commerce started with the only key and that was to increase the client base and sustainability. Live streaming creates a huge viewing community for brands to create an everlasting impact on viewers for their products. It became trending as viewers found the essence of a personal touch from the brand. It is always appealing when you are demonstrated or taught something with all your heart and soul. Live commerce is also adjoined with live chat where the seller can answer the viewers’ questions. This has made selling and branding comparatively easy where it ensures all the customers’ if and buts, within the streaming. Live commerce can also be referred to as a retail market that converts clients with their appealing communication skills over the web.

What are the benefits of live commerce?

Live commerce offers several advantages, such as creating an engaging and interactive shopping experience, allowing viewers to ask questions and receive immediate responses, building trust through product demonstrations, and providing a sense of urgency with limited-time offers.

The future of e-commerce in the next five years is live commerce

With industries modernizing, the blueprint of deriving customer focus has also changed. Companies and brands have started focusing more on the engagement of clients than selling. Being consumers as the primary focus, the plans are set to innovate satisfaction and newness for them. The value of live streaming is increasing each day as sellers, companies, and brands get to know how they move towards becoming known in the market each day. It is expected that by 2025, the global market share of  Live commerce will increase by multiple times with the technologies being adopted by brands and sellers.

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The Market Size of Live Commerce

The value of live commerce is increasing each day

Live streaming masters at creating engagement and so it manages to draft one for the e-commerce industry as well. As e-commerce dwells some of its part with live commerce it makes a huge area for the customers designing products with the mindset of the client. This has helped brands to create a strong client base for their companies. It helps brands to return viewers long to their streams, creating a lasting impression.

Client conversion ratio: Live streaming keeps clients engrossed with the content delivery while being live. It has been noticed that clients have shown up 10 times more than the standard e-commerce. Live commerce allows viewers to engage themselves with the liveliness of the stream. The stream also focuses on consumer-attractive deals, with coupons, offers, and discount vouchers making them valid till the stream spans. These strategies create client sustainability along with higher conversions.

Personal touch: Live commerce similar to a retail store, also ensures personal touch. The idea revolves around engaging the clients with the superior quality products the brands serve for customer benefit. Live commerce creates lively atmos during the stream where the brand comes up with a homely sales approach for their customers. Low latency live streaming is real-time, the viewers can also make a conversation with the brands via live chat. These make live commerce more captivating.

Customer engagement: It has always been engaging if a video is broadcast live. It creates more traffic. Above all, a seller can put its brand up with so many lucrative deals that it ultimately manages customer attention. Altogether, even a single live button displayed on the screen creates an impact on viewers. The way the brands create an impression through a video speaks a lot about how the viewers escalate over live commerce deals.

Brand pull: Live commerce is a new technology that has given a boost to the e-commerce industry. Popular brands are coming up live to showcase their products with various offers, collaborating with celebrities, and influencers. All these strategies along with scalable technology create a huge impact on viewers. These viewers tend to follow people with whom they get influenced, and live commerce with these influencers becomes a plus. it considerably shows a rise in brand awareness among the people escalating brand growth.

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Live commerce user rentention

How does Technology play its part in enhancing live Commerce?

Live commerce is becoming popular day by day, and it is all because of technology that live commerce came into existence. It has been such an approaching deal today, that live-streaming technology is on point becoming popular among various e-commerce websites, companies, and brands. Various technologies within live streaming make live commerce more interesting.

Improvised recommendations: Technology has so far advanced a lot. On an e-commerce website, a viewer witnesses recommendations or choices similar to his taste. AI technology helps an e-commerce user to make deals according to the suggestions displayed. Technology has been so precise that it does not let a seller miss the opportunity to convert a viewer to a trusted consumer.

Sense of being live: Technology today has become real-time. It has brought up products that have enhanced live communication and focused on brightening networks. Similarly, the innovation of live streaming has become a deal that can make huge engagements with the title of being live on a virtual platform. On live commerce, one can be in touch with the seller personally, chatting with them. Communicating in real-time helps to bring up bonding between the two communities.

High information density: Technology enables a user to retain huge data. It collects and summarises data of clients, viewers, and also their searches and purchases, making a strong database. Technology has made it possible. A seller, brand, or company can avail of a huge database and retain their customers easily. Live commerce is a boon for generating a large database as it builds a huge viewing community, which communicates with the brands’ product sales. Nonetheless, they also help in making reliable engagement strategies.

Increased conversion rates: Live commerce has considerably seen an increasing graph of viewers converting into customers. The innovation brought up by the brands cares for an appealing touch, increasing traffic at their streams. It is also noticed that just by live commerce strategies the conversion rates have comparatively increased. It was noticed that the fashion industry increased its online presence by 20%, just by live commerce, engaging viewers with numerous influencers.

Which platforms support live commerce?

Various platforms support live commerce, including social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as dedicated live streaming platforms such as Amazon Live, Alibaba's Taobao Live, and JD Live in China.

Big Tech is launching Live Shopping platforms

Amazon Live: The E-commerce giant is naturally looking to expand towards live streaming as it launched Amazon Live for its US citizens in 2022. Amazon Live is a platform where brands, retailers, & Amazon talent go live & showcase the products, and customers can have live interaction with them via chat & emojis and easily buy the products. Further, streamers on the platform get a unique URL that works as their storefront where customer can view all their previous live streams as well as recorded videos. The adoption of Amazon Live has been incredible so far as content creators flocking around Amazon Live to create a huge profit for themselves.

eBay Live: eBay is also not far behind Amazon as it's announced to launch a dedicated live shopping platform. eBay Live is in Beta and will have live streaming for curated trading cards & collectibles as eBay always had a huge community around collectibles & trading cards as it’s growing faster. Moreover, these collectibles will also include NFTs. As collectible market & NFTs go hand in hand. This unique combo just goes to show the reach of live shopping & live commerce. Furthermore, eBay promises their live platform will have an engaging environment and deliver a more streamlined, and sophisticated way for communities to connect, buy and sell.

Facebook Live: Facebook is also testing out its Facebook Live for creators. Facebook live shopping is a live streaming feature that has been around for a couple of years, where creators can showcase their products to their friends, in groups, & on pages, but the seamless adoption of it by brands & influencers was not present. However, as the trends are changing and as Live shopping is becoming more & more trendier Facebook is looking to increase user adoption by hosting live streams much easier. They also launched a couple of features like shop in groups & product recommendations to encourage live shopping further. This would allow group admins to enable the shopping feature on Facebook pages & groups. Additionally, on Facebook, many are hosting live-stream shopping events to showcase their products & sell them successfully. This has been very profitable for influencers & celebrities so far.

Can anyone participate in live commerce?

While anyone can participate in watching live commerce broadcasts, hosting live commerce sessions typically requires a partnership or collaboration with the platform or an influencer. However, with the rise of social commerce, individuals can leverage live-streaming features on social media platforms to showcase and sell products to their audience.

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How does Technology play its part in enhancing Live Commerce?

Future of live commerce with technological transitions

Earlier, e-commerce was merely used by the fashion and apparel industry. Where the brands just focused on bringing up what’s new in the fashion market. Gradually with an increase in technology, the e-commerce industry got a kick with various other industries. These e-commerce websites being a B2C market also made conversions with joining B2B and C2C business models.

Technology has brought up several transitions in the e-commerce market. Here we realize that these markets are now experiencing a new phase which is live commerce. A combination of technology and marketplace. As the word sounds exciting, so is its happening. It has created an everlasting impact on e-commerce websites, brands, sellers, and the marketplace community. And the practice of this activity has made huge engagements. The sellers as well as the buyers, both have convinced themselves that live commerce is an approaching deal

In the current phase, the low latency live streaming trends the most. It assures viewers with a real-time experience. The brands can be in direct conversation with the viewers through live chat. The future is going to be more amazing with more enhanced attributes. We are going to experience huge changes in technology.

  • Technology will help to enhance and expand the micro sectors, bringing them up, competing with huge brands, and excelling in the standard of living.
  • We will experience growth of under-rated influencers that will considerably lower the brands’ expenses
  • Technology is going to have a positive impact on the new sectors. We will observe those sectors which were never seen in the e-commerce industry to date.
  • It can be observed that technological transitions will bring changes in live commerce with tools like AR, VR, AI, and more, making real-time experiences more fascinating and accessible.

Technology has always played a crucial role in bringing change in several industries. Bringing up newness each day into technology has increased engagement and has made the conversion ratio more accelerated. E-commerce has recently begun with the practice of live streaming and has implemented the technology well. With transitions in technology, live commerce creates a dynamic impact on sales and strategies for the coming times.