The endless possibilities with Live Commerce

Basically, there are many options for Live Commerce. You just need to find the right solution that suits your business needs and learn how to implement them. In this chapter, we’ll explain the most effective Live Commerce options and give you some background about the subject.

Live Commerce is growing

DigitalCommerce360 stated: while U.S. retail sales increased 6.9% in 2020, online purchasing grew more than 4 times as fast, growing by 32.4%. That propelled U.S. e-Commerce penetration to a record high of 19.6% from 15.8% a year earlier, when excluding items rarely purchased online, such as vehicles, fuel, and food and beverages purchased in restaurants and bars. E-Commerce accounted for the bulk of retail industry growth in 2020 – 74.6% – a big jump over 54% of retail growth in 2019. 

In fact, when excluding online sales, all other forms of U.S. retail – mainly physical stores but also vending machines and various forms of direct sales – grew only 2.1% in 2020. The 32.4% increase in online retail sales compared to the 2.1% increase in all other retail sales illustrates the magnitude of the shift to online shopping driven by the pandemic.

Deliver an incredible customer experience

One of the biggest challenges for retailers these days is to bring a complete experience to new and existing customers. Of course, your product or service needs to be competitive, like the pricing, availability, infrastructure, and more – but the changing behavior of customers is now more important than ever. 

The status quo right is to have an incredible customer experience. Nonetheless, according to Searchmetrics new research suggests most websites that rank in Google’s top 20 search results do not currently pass the minimum requirements for a good page experience. This was set out in the search engine’s new Core Web Vitals update. 96% of sites tested in US desktop searches and more than 90% of those in mobile searches fail to meet Google’s three Core Web Vitals thresholds for good website performance and usability and risk their rankings being negatively impacted from June. Currently, only the top 2 or 3 ranking websites in search results achieve the required “good” score in most of the Core Web Vitals metrics according to the analysis by Searchmetrics.

Innovation is the requirement for survival in these rapidly changing digital times. Retailers must do whatever it takes to give customers the best experience possible in order to maintain their loyalty. Speeding up with the implementation of new Live Commerce tools, such as Live Video Shopping, could assure your brand doesn’t get left behind. The vital part of this process is to find a great solution partner who knows how to embrace modern commerce. That’s where Whisbi comes in. Let’s dive into the options for Live Commerce.

Live Video Shopping

The first solution is Live Video Shopping. This popular trend is extremely helpful to make sure your brand is growing and engaging with your customers in real-time. This trend plays three essential roles: provide engagement, help customers better understand your products, and sell your products directly from your website.

Since Live Video Shopping is the next big thing in retail, the future is bright. Regular brick-and-mortar stores are outdated and consumers continue looking for other ways to shop. They do need human interaction, and that’s exactly what Live Video Shopping brings to the table. When live commerce is done correctly, real-time interactivity helps to drive customer’s interests and help them buy (more). 

Fortune claims: ‘Live Video Shopping will continue to expand and evolve because the possibilities are dazzling. Attracting new customers and guiding them to your website is a top priority for retailers.’ According to Bloomberg, live shopping generated $60 billion in global sales in 2019 with U.S. sales accounting for $1 billion of that slice. Chinese buyers have long supported social commerce with a projected sales increase this year to $242 billion dollars, likely to reach half a trillion dollars by 2023. 

Bottom line: it’s highly recommended to get personal with your customers and to create an in-store experience online. Customers want a seamless flow and make any purchase without a hassle, from the comfort of their home. Live Video Shopping provides a smart and human-like experience online – which is just what customers need. 

Live Broadcasting

The second Live Commerce solution is Live Broadcasting, which refers to online streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcasted in real-time. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but not live-streamed. You can live stream through any media nowadays, for example, Facebook Live or Youtube Live. The difference with Whisbi is that our platform allows your viewers to watch your live broadcast anonymously. Send your brand message to an unlimited number of viewers online, using just a tablet or a smartphone. The rich analytics options in Whisbi’s platform allows you to easily track all kinds of metrics. Also, with our solution your live streams are hosted directly on your website – which means no competitor can advertise there, like they do on Youtube. But most importantly, the fact that Whisbi is on your website means that you can collect first-party data – to gain crucial insights about your customers and offer them more personalised experiences with your brand during their customer journey.

See how our customers implemented this trend:

• Hyundai achieved a 3:1 return on investment with live video engagement and conversational sales
• The world’s biggest technology firm achieved a 5X increase in sales for broadcast viewers
• A USA Telecommunications multinational increased their online conversion rate by 161%

Live Chat

The last (but not least) tool that we find highly effective is Live Chat. There are a few things that make our Sell solution unique, let’s take a look:

• Smart lead routing and lead qualification: automate lead routing based on your business rules, qualify leads 24/7, and connect leads to your sales team with artificial intelligence technology based on IBM Watson
• Conversational tools & features for to help you close: real-time video, file transfer, web sharing, live messaging and bookmarks for agents
• Enterprise-level integrations: connect Whisbi with tools like Salesforce, Google analytics, and more to sync data and automate workflows.
• World-class reporting: track the entire customer journey from click-through to interaction and closed sale. Gain a better understanding of your customer’s behavior and collect key insights through world-class analytics and reporting.

With Live Chat, you take your customer experience to the next level. You can connect your hot online leads with your sales experts in real-time. But most importantly, you can digitize your sales journey and bring the in-store experience online. Use conversations to qualify web visitors and connect them to your experts in stores, call centers, or showrooms.

Enable your online customers to have real-time conversations with your sales team every time they visit your website.