What’s next for live commerce

Proven success with live commerce

Live shopping events

Did you know Kohl’s was an early adopter of live commerce by streaming the LC Lauren Conrad Runway show during the 2015 New York Fashion Week. Viewers had the option to purchase any garments seen on the catwalk via a dedicated portal.

Live auctions

Shopping platform Whatnot uses online live auction shopping to tap into shoppers' nostalgia for paper goods including comic books and sports cards, They raised $225 million in funding to date, putting its valuation at $1.5 billion (unicorn status)

Influencer streaming

An influencer sold $19 billion worth of goods on Single’s Day in 2021 — attracting almost 250 million viewers during the event. To put that in perspective, the most-viewed U.S. television broadcast last year was the Super Bowl, bringing in a measly 91 million viewers.

So, what’s next for live commerce

All that being said, successful deployment of live commerce requires more than just video streaming. To turn ‘scrolling’ into ‘shopping’, simple in-app purchasing is essential.

That requires companies to leverage data automation for personalization and experiment with integrating new technologies such as extended reality (XR) and machine learning (ML) to further enhance the end-user experience.

Drive consumer interest with gamification and interactivity
Offer buyers expert advice from afar with augmented reality
Allow users to buy and sell NFTs with blockchain

Endless possibilities await, but you can start easy

While these technologies reveal endless possibilities, implementing live commerce doesn’t need to be complicated.

Someone new to running for instance might choose to visit a store rather than shop online out of the need to speak with someone. But due to their schedule they might not be able to do that as quickly as they would like. As a result, their purchase is delayed.

So why not give them an option to simply dial in in real-time with a shoe expert to answer all their personalized questions? By video chatting with a representative and streaming the buyer would be more confident about their purchase (and more likely to spend money).

It’s easy to get started with 8x8 Jitsi as a Service.