What Is Live Shopping: How Online Businesses Can Leverage It?

What Is Live Shopping?

In nutshell, consider the traditional idea of home shopping networks meeting the new-age concepts of social media. Tool 5 Dollar remember how home shopping channels would display various items and have dedicated hotlines for us to order them.

Well, live shopping has taken the same idea but made it a whole lot interactive. In this, hosts simply display products and their usage via live streaming on leading platforms. Viewers can ask questions and leave comments on a real-time basis as the entire streaming experience is quite interactive.

By displaying the actual use or real-world experience of a product, customers can know more about it. They can also get their queries resolved instantly by the host. Later, they can just go to your store to buy the product or directly make the purchase via social channels. Since the concept has gained popularity, social media and online stores have made it simpler for us to implement it.

Leading Platforms to Implement Live Shopping

The idea of shopping via live streaming has become extremely popular and leading platforms are coming up with so many ways to make it work. For instance, you can try any popular social media app to do it or can also integrate dedicated solutions on your existing website. Before you get into any details, make sure you explore the following live shopping online platforms and pick the most preferred solution to meet your requirements.

Hosting Live Streams on Your Online Store

This is a common way to make the most of live stream shopping opportunities. Instead of redirecting your customers from other platforms, why not retain them on your native website.

Besides that, it has been noticed that most of the shopping really takes place after when the live event ends. In this way, you don’t have to follow up and remind your leads after the event. They can directly buy the product from your website once the stream ends.

To do this, you can take the assistance of tools like LiveScale and Channelize. You can find their apps on the Shopify App Store and can easily integrate them with your account. Afterward, these solutions will let you host live shopping events on your native platform, and you can use them to attract more customers.

Leverage Social Media Platforms

These days, almost every leading social media platform like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, etc. is coming up with dedicated live streaming features. Out of them, Instagram and Facebook are the two most popular picks of online stores to host live sales and other fun activities.

You can simply use the native “Go Live” features on your Instagram page to start interacting with your followers on a real-time basis. Your customers don’t have to create another account on your website and can start interacting with you via Instagram Live. Later, you can just redirect them to your store or use the native shopping feature of Instagram/Facebook to sell your products.

Dedicated Third-party Platforms

There are also tons of readily available third-party apps and websites that you can explore to host live streaming shopping events. A couple of such platforms that I would recommend exploring are PopShop Live, ShopShops, TaoBao Live, CommentSold, and NTWRK. Even tech giants like Amazon and Google Shopping are coming up with live shopping and other options that you can consider exploring.

The good thing about these platforms is that they already host tons of customers who are interested in shopping. You simply need to identify and target relevant leads and link your online store to start hosting live sales and other events.

Key Benefits of Live Shopping

Even though shopping via live streaming is a new concept, it is already gaining a lot of traction in the market. If you are still not sure if live shopping is right for your store or not, then consider its following advantages:

Being Interactive

One of the best things about shopping via live events is that they let us interact with our audience directly. Unlike the age-old concept of home shopping networks that followed one-way communication, live sales have become extremely interactive.

‌‌You can talk to your audience, answer their queries, and do so much more to establish your brand’s reputation.

High Returns

As more and more people would interact with your brand, they will be more inclined to buy its products. One report has suggested that live events can return a conversion rate of as high.

If you come up with more interactive events and attractive sales (like the end of the season sale), then you can even have a better return rate.

Low Investment

You might already know that live shopping events don’t require any substantial investment. You can use any freely available platform like Instagram or Facebook and host any live event to sell numerous products online.

Just redirect your audience from these platforms to your website for free where they can start shopping.

Smart Tips & Tricks to Make the Most of Live Shopping

As you can see, live shopping has so many benefits and it is super easy to host live sales and other related events. While doing so, I would recommend following these smart tips that will help you maximize your returns.

Try to Provide Value

A lot of newbies consider live shopping as a bland way to just sell their products. Remember, if you will keep ranting about your products, then it will start appearing as an advertisement instead.

Therefore, you should try to identify the pain points of your audience and solve them by giving some practical solutions.

Set up a Consistent Format

Don’t simply start hosting a live streaming shopping session out of the blue. Make sure that you have a proper format and agenda beforehand.

Also, start promoting the live shopping event via social media in advance so that you would get more audience. You can also consider setting up a preferred schedule so that your audience will know about your live streaming timings as well.

Collaborate with Others

One of the best things about live streaming is that it lets us collaborate with other brands and people. For instance, if you are hosting a live streaming shopping event on Instagram, then you can easily collaborate with influencers.

There is a provision in Instagram to go live together or you can just host them on your channel instead. A cross-brand collaboration can also help you expand the overall reach of your company.

Give a Personal Touch

Last, but most importantly, give a personal appeal to your audience while presenting a live stream shopping event. They would love to know your story and how a specific product helped you in the real world.

You should try to understand your target audience and provide a customized shopping experience that is easier for them to relate to.

Conclusion

Now that you know how live shopping works and what are its evident benefits, you can certainly explore it too. Just make sure you select the right platform to live stream and promote your products by following the above-listed suggestions.

Since this type of shopping is still new, you can come up with different ways to market your products and be an industry leader. Just make sure to use a powerful platform to have just the perfect catalog for your store. The platform is equipped with tons of features to manage your online dropshipping store easily.