In 1982, Boston Computers opened its (virtual) doors to the world. At that time, it was the first and only player in the field of online retail to hold customers’ interest. Fast forward to 2022, online sellers use retail livestreaming to amplify sales.
The number of online retail stores has jumped to 24 million, with intense competition pushing brands to be innovative in the market.
Online selling is a large part of the retail e-Commerce industry today, without which most companies would fail to connect with a large base of their target audience. They would even struggle to retain the loyal ones. Hence, engagement is the best way for brands to stay on top of their online retail commerce game.
Haven’t we seen people scrolling through videos that instantly trigger their urge to buy what they saw? Retail livestreaming is filling that very gap and doing a good job! It perfectly combines selling and engaging, giving every customer a three-sixty-degree virtual shopping experience.
As we dive into how livestream eCommerce can elevate online retail, let’s first understand the current retail trends.
Top 6 Digital Trends In the Retail eCommerce You Must Know
Why is it the right time for retail livestreaming to be a part of every brand’s marketing strategy? Let’s find out:
1. A brand not Selling Online will Cease to Exist
This might feel like a disclaimer if you’re still subscribing to the brick-and-mortar way of selling. However, Statista predicts a 56% growth in retail eCommerce sales by 2026, amounting to a whopping 8.1 trillion dollar industry worldwide.
Besides opening typical online stores, brands are also pivoting towards engaging strategies like creating shoppable videos for their websites and foraying into retail live selling.
2. Omnichannel Creates Seamless Shopping Experiences
We’re in a place where people want the most immersive experience possible. This includes the ‘phygital’ model – the best of physical and digital stores.
According to Harvard Business Review, 73% of shoppers prefer purchasing through multiple channels. In addition, with changing shopping habits, brands need to create an in-store experience on their websites rather than driving traffic to their social platforms, where conversion rates are low and distractions are high.
Thus, omnichannel presence has become a need for retailers all across the globe.
3. Automated Marketing Technology Helps Retailers Sell From Anywhere to Anyone
A geographical boundary is not a factor stopping retailers anymore. Today, buying and selling can take place over a few clicks, all thanks to automation. 72% of business owners use automation or plan to reduce the time their workforce spends doing manual labor. It is the most preferred direction to save time, energy, and money.
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4. Same-day Delivery Gives Retailers a Clear Advantage
Did you know that 88% of buyers are willing to pay for same-day or faster deliveries? Additionally, due to supply-chain problems and shipping holdups, same-day delivery enables small local firms to distribute their products more quickly than significant internet retailers.
5. Social Commerce is one of the Prominent Digital Trends in the Retail Industry
From selling on Instagram to retail livestreaming, new avenues of selling have emerged in the retail sector. 90% of customers reach out to brands on social media platforms, and 43% are likely to make a purchase there. The aggressive social commerce growth is not one to ignore.
6. Interactive Retail Livestreaming is Bridging the Gap
Social media expansion has helped retailers foray into a more immersive experience via livestreaming eCommerce. It creates dents by offering interactions with influencers and other brand representatives and a closer look at the products they intend to sell. As a result, the industry saw a 99% growth between 2019 and 2020, so the future looks bright!
All retail trend point towards digital expansion. However, some of the most convincing arguments are mentioned below.
Fig: Retail Trends & Statistics
5 Compelling Reasons To Embrace Livestream Shopping in Retail eCommerce
During retail live shopping, customers can browse product displays, engage merchants, acquire information, and purchase things via real-time streaming. In addition, brands can humanize the online buying experience by livestreaming interactions with customers.
So what’s more in the store? Let’s find out.
1. It Redefines Your Customer Engagement
Fig: Real-time interactions create an immersive retail experience
Retail livestreaming does not take the customer through a journey. Instead, it takes them through an experience that sometimes even brick-and-mortar stores can’t provide. Livestreaming goes beyond traditional online selling as it offers demonstrations, live interactions with celebrities and influencers, and even virtual try-on sessions.
Engagement of this kind is not only combating traditional selling challenges like shopping cart abandonment but also leading to higher conversion rates.
Companies recorded a 30% conversion rate by retail livestreaming, a 10x jump over conventional online selling. Thus hinging your wagon to livestreaming eCommerce is the way to go!
2. It Breakdowns The Walled Gardens
Kim Kardashian introduced her new perfume product to the Chinese market by retail livestreaming in 2019 and drew 13 million viewers, selling 15,000 bottles in just a few minutes!
Source: Springwise
Wondering where to begin with for livestreaming? What is the right platform? These doubts are common. The good thing is that brands now have the option to livestream on their websites and mobile applications rather than depending on third-party eCommerce platforms or social media.
Brands like Firework make this possible through decentralized video technology, allowing the videos to be embedded on the website and other social media platforms.
Independent retail livestreaming is also an excellent chance for brands to grow their online presence and pull web traffic. You can keep your loyal customers engaged and open doors to some new and especially young audiences. Some brands recorded up to a 20% increase in young audiences alone, with retail livestreaming done well.
3. You Can Repurpose, Retarget, And Re-engage
Retail livestreaming comes with the superpowers of repurposing and retargeting your content. In addition, it is more than a one-time affair, as you get the chance to use snippets of the content on other platforms.
61% of marketers have noted that livestream videos have the potential to use used as content that can be viewed (or repurposed) later on.
When retailers host on their domains, they can provide video archives so that customers can watch previous events whenever they want. However, archived editions might not contain the shoppable feature or conversation history, depending on the technological platform used by a merchant.
You may also consider leveraging information on social media or other channels in smaller segments. For example, consider how an excerpt from a livestream could improve a product detail page.
4. It Helps You Hit The Bull’s Eye With Data
Analytics from retail livestreaming helps brands plan out their activities and product offerings with more clarity
Source: Firework
Retail live selling is not one of those shooting-in-the-dark marketing efforts that don’t give you any insight into the goals.
Companies can acquire a wide range of initial data by hosting livestream shopping sessions on the brand’s website, including engagement metrics, viewing patterns, purchase touchpoints, drop rates, etc.
Additionally, marketers can use livestream shopping to collect the measurable data they need to analyze session performance, create tailored films for their target audience, boost spot orders, and lower cart abandonment rates.
For example, if a customer stays for only 30 seconds, you can send them a full link to the livestream for viewing later or offer an instant coupon to someone who stuck around 15 minutes and convert their intention into a sale.
5. Helps in Boosting Engagement with Millennials and GenZ
Livestream shopping is not an option if you market an online company or store and your target market is Generation Z and Millennials – it is a must. These groups make up the majority of attendees at live shopping events.
Millennials top the list in terms of spending cohort making up 30% of the demographic. Gen X comes to a close 24% and Gen Z at 20%. These are a group of tech-savvy people who can easily navigate their journey from a livestream to a purchase.
They seek such interactions for education and entertainment and don’t hesitate to watch the event. A study has also pointed out that Gen Z spends more on luxury purchases than millennials do. Therefore, they make the ideal target audience for retail livestreaming if marketed well.
Fig: Five Compelling Reasons To Embrace Retail Livestream Shopping
Power Of Live Shopping To Create An Immersive Journey At All Levels Of Retail eCommerce
Livestreaming started mainly in China. Today, it has successfully made inroads into countries all over the world. The power of live shopping is visible in almost every format of purchasing. Here’s how people are witnessing live shopping around them:
1. Pre-Purchase
People generally search for videos to conduct their research. Retail livestreaming has also initiated virtual product launches that help brands engage with potential customers from a distance.
2. Online Purchase
From videos to display a product’s look and fit on a model to using shoppable videos that empower consumers to purchase the product directly, live shopping creates a holistic experience.
3. In-store Purchase
Videos are being used in stores to show testimonials, facts and information about products and salvage the general curiosity of buyers. On a different note, they make great resources for training and upskilling employees.
4. Post-Purchase
At this point, your goal should be to provide your consumer with pertinent information regarding their purchase. Unboxing tutorials and how-to videos that show your customers how to get started are great in this situation.
In addition, brands increasingly use videos to advocate for their products by leveraging user-generated video footage for testimonials or demonstrating a product or solution.
How Can Firework Livestream Shopping Help Brands Enhance Retail eCommerce Experience?
Firework enables marketers to integrate high-impact livestreaming and video shopping experiences into their owned and operated websites and apps. In addition, the no-code Firework platform integrates with custom websites and well-known E-commerce CMS programs.
While Firework understands the industry of livestreaming eCommerce platforms, it prioritizes customer experience. The humanizing of the brand, creating an emotional connection, and keeping your audiences entertained are the top things that come with Firework’s retail livestreaming service.
On the backend of Firework is superior technology that strengthens the connection between you and your customers. From its studio to various other facilities, Firework has helped brands build content from livestreaming and monetize it for better gains. Take a look at a couple of success stories yourself:
1. The Heinz Halloween Leveraged Livestream Shopping
Heinz and Firework collaborated to promote their first-ever Halloween pop-up, which had as its theme making silly fun costumes out of “tomato blood” ketchup. The campaign included a live stream event anchored on Heinz’s website and distributed through media spots on publisher sites that drove traffic from all directions.
Heinz livestream conducted in collaboration with Firework (Source: Firework)
Result: The livestream garnered 1544 engagements, 14X the engagement rate on Facebook and 18X the engagement rate on Instagram.
2. The American Girl Announcement Used Retail Livestream
American Girl went straight for retail livestreaming to make its ‘Girl of the Year 2022’ announcement. They ran a Livestream on their websites as well as the social media accounts of their media partners.
The Livestream replay was also aired across Firework’s publisher partners using native integrations, adding extra scale.
Result: The event delivered more than 250k viewers in the livestream and its replay. There was a 25% engagement rate, with an 11% click rate reflecting a strong purchase intent.
If you want to discover the potential of retail livestreaming for your brand, book a demo with Firework today and get started.
Wrap Up
The retail livestreaming scene has become a game changer in how people sell.
It has humanized brands, helped build connections rather than encouraging the exertion of conventional selling, and has given reasons to the consumer to stick around a brand even in a competitive scenario.
Brands can interact with consumers in real-time via their website or mobile application and use first-party data to create better user interfaces. It is the present and future of buying and selling.
