Live Shopping: The Next Big Thing in eCommerce?

Live shopping isn't just the future, it's the present. If you're running an eCommerce business, understanding and leveraging live shopping could be your next big move.

In 2024, live shopping made up 2% of eСommerce sales. However, by 2026, it's expected to surge to 20%. With numbers like that, sitting on the sidelines could mean missing out on a major slice of the market.

In this article, you'll learn why live shopping is quickly becoming a game-changing sales channel, how it's reshaping the way consumers shop online, and most importantly, how your brand can tap into it to boost conversions, build engagement, and stay ahead of competitors.

What is live shopping?

Selling in live streams originated from China in the mid-2010s and is now gaining global traction. It combines the benefits of traditional home shopping with digital engagement tools. By 2020, it had already become a dominant eCommerce model, blending real-time video, influencer marketing, and instant purchasing into an excellent user experience.

In 2023, China's live-shopping commerce market reached nearly five trillion Yuan, making up more than 15% of the country's total eCommerce sales.

This trend didn't stay local for a long time since it provided great success, and other markets started to notice it quickly. South Korea and Southeast Asia were early adopters of integrated live commerce features in early 2019. By 2022, the trend had reached Western markets, with companies like Amazon, TikTok, and Instagram rolling out their own live shopping tools.

Adoption rates vary by content, but Europe and the United States are catching on, especially among Gen Z and millennial customers. According to the latest statistics, 40% of US customers claim to use livestream commerce, and this number is around 35% in Europe. While the number isn't as high as in China, it's still catching up and is expected to rise even further by 2026.

In a live retail event, your host can be a brand representative, partnered influencer, or celebrity. The aim is to present products, answer questions, and demonstrate how items work in front of a live audience. Your viewers can then engage through the live chat, receive exclusive deals, and purchase products instantly through integrated checkout features.

How does it work?

Livestream shopping is a video-based retail experience that operates with real-time video streaming technology alongside interactive features like chat, Q&A sessions, and direct purchase links.

Let's take a closer look at the key components that make a live shopping event successful:

• Live video streaming: Brands use Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) to broadcast to platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or proprietary eCommerce tools. To ensure a good experience, you'll need a good internet connection, a suitable DSLR camera with HDMI capture capabilities, streaming software, and a cloud-based CDN.
• Interactive engagement: Viewers can ask questions, leave comments, and receive responses in real time. This is similar to asking a shop assistant about a product, except live shopping customers can do so from the comfort of their homes.
• Integrated checkout: Embedded shopping links allow customers to purchase products directly from the video without leaving the platform. You're not sending customers away from your video or expecting them to navigate too many tabs and online spaces.
• Influencer or brand-led promotion: Often, brands collaborate with influencers to maximize reach and credibility. These partnerships should ideally bring in new customers and help to add credibility to your brand. Your best bet is to work with micro-influencers since they have the highest success rate.
• Exclusive deals and limited-time offers: Flash sales, discounts, and early access promotions create urgency and encourage immediate purchases. This not only rewards viewers for tuning into your Live, but it also makes future lives seem more enticing.

Real-world example

In 2023, Nordstrom hosted a series of live shopping events using their "Live Shopping by Nordstrom" platform. During a one-hour session featuring holiday gift guides, the brand saw a more than 18% conversion rate, compared to the traditional eCommerce average of 1.6-3%.

This means that viewers weren't only engaged for longer, but they made more purchases, much more quickly and in higher volume.

Above all, Nordstrom was one of the major US retailers that hosted live-stream shopping.

How to integrate live shopping into your eCommerce strategy

If you're already selling online, you're one step closer to benefiting from live shopping. If you're just starting out, the following advice will help you develop a solid online selling strategy.

Integrating interactive commerce into an existing eCommerce strategy requires careful planning and execution. We'll discuss each step individually to ensure you implement it correctly.

1. Define your goals

Before you integrate live shopping into your business plan, it's important to know what your goals are. Do you want to simply increase sales? Is the aim to improve customer engagement and create a community? Or do you want to increase brand awareness and expand your reach?

Afterward, it's important to know how you'll measure your success. Common KPIs for live shopping include:

• Conversion rates
• Engagement rates
• Viewership metrics
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Average order value (AOV)
• Customer retention or return rate

While you can do all of this and more with live shopping, your goals will strongly impact the content and structure of your events. To figure out what you hope to gain most, consider what inspired you to start your brand. Where is your company right now, and where would you like it to go?

Once you have your goals written down, you can plan your live streams to help you reach them. For instance, if your goal is to sell off excess stock, make sure you spread the word about drastic discounts before you go live. If your goal is community-building, prioritize Q&A sessions, polls, and audience shoutouts to boost engagement.

It's always important to think long-term. Where are you now, and where will you be in the next six months or a year?

2. Choosing the right product to promote

Product selection can make or break your live event. Of course, if you select the wrong products, you won't make sales and may not even get as much engagement as you'd hoped.

Generally, it's best not to go live with more than 10 products. You can start everything with your best sellers, or products that you've recently launched. Also, before choosing an item, run it through this simple framework:

• Visual Appeal: Is the product visually interesting or easy to demonstrate on camera?
• Interaction Potential: Does the item invite questions or engagement?
• Storytelling value: Can you easily talk about the product's benefits, origin, or unique selling point?
• Availability & urgency: Is the product in stock, and can you offer a time-limited deal or bonus?

Not all products are suited for real-time selling. Focus on items that benefit from visual demonstrations, such as home goods, electronics, fashion, beauty, etc. As you do more live streams, you'll see which products do best and which ones you can leave out next time.

You can experiment and track performance data such as product-specific conversion rates, viewership drop-off during specific product demos, and most-commented or asked-about items.

3. Offer top-notch customer support

Customer support is the backbone of a successful eCommerce strategy. To ensure top-level customer support, you can use inbound contact center software to enhance live shopping. The software helps in:

• Real-time customer support: During a live shopping event, customers might have questions about pricing, shipping, or product details. Inbound contact center software enables live chat, voice support, and AI-powered bots to handle inquiries instantly, reducing friction in the purchasing process.
• Omnichannel integration: Most of these real-time retail events happen on social media or eCommerce platforms like Shopify, TikTok, or Amazon Live.
• Personalized shopping assistance: With AI and CRM integration, customer service agents can access purchase history and preferences, allowing them to provide tailored product recommendations during or after a live event. This not only improves the shopping experience but also increases conversions.
• Automated follow-ups & retargeting: Inbound contact center software can automate follow-up messages, offer discounts, or send cart abandonment reminders to encourage purchases.
• Scalability for high-traffic events: Live shopping events often attract a surge in customer engagement. Contact center solutions use cloud-based systems to handle high volumes of inquiries without any delays and ensure a smooth shopping experience.

By integrating inbound contact center software with live shopping, eCommerce brands can provide a high-converting and seamless customer experience that drives sales and builds long-term loyalty.

4. Staying organized after the stream: Keeping your documents organized

The actual live selling itself is usually exciting and highly effective in boosting sales and engagement. However, the logistics afterward could overwhelm even the most organized team. Once you've finished a session, there's still plenty to manage - including customer inquiries, invoices, and event documents.

You may also have customers who buy multiple products in one live stream, so if you know how to combine PDF files, you can merge the single invoices into one, making it easier for customers to track their purchases and for your team to manage fulfillment efficiently.

Post-event management is all about closing the loop on your customers' experience. So, before you begin planning your next Live, compile all order summaries, FAQs, shipping details, discount codes, and receipts into clearly marked folders or consolidated PDFs. Then take a moment to review what worked, log key metrics, and make a note of any lessons learned.

5. Choosing the right platform

Businesses can either host live streams on their own eCommerce websites or leverage third-party platforms, which we'll discuss in the next section.

The best choice will depend heavily on your audience, size, features, and ease of integration. At first, you may want to try out one platform at a time to see which works best for you.

Social media platforms

Social media platforms are the best for engagement & discoverability. More than 5 billion users worldwide use social media, and they are the best to use for businesses with a strong social media presence, looking to drive engagement and impulse purchases.

• Instagram live shopping: It's no surprise that you might have encountered so many people shopping on Instagram. Therefore, it's best to integrate live shopping with your Instagram Shop, allowing direct purchasing from the online channel itself. The most popular industries on Instagram include fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands.
• TikTok shop: Live shopping blends well with TikTok since you can highly engage people with short-form videos and establish a direct and seamless checkout process. However, TikTok is a better choice if your target audience is young, like Gen Z.
• Facebook: Allows direct sales via Facebook Shops, and works well for older demographics. This is a better choice to go with if you are targeting a broad audience.
• YouTube: Best for detailed product showcases with in-stream purchasing. YouTube live shopping will be your best choice if you're focused on tech, gaming, and long-form product demos.

eCommerce platforms with video commerce features

This is a great choice for businesses that want to gain full control over the checkout process and their customer data.

• Shopify: Best for small to medium businesses that are selling direct-to-consumers, and the good part is that it integrates live shopping within your store for a simple and easy checkout process.
• Amazon Live: The best option for brands selling on Amazon. Why? Because it leverages Amazon's vast audience and prime shopping behavior.
• WooCommerce: Only a good option if you are dealing with WordPress-based eCommerce stores. The advantage you have with WooCommerce is the wide range of customizable shopping experiences with direct store integration.
• Bambuser: Offers interactive video shopping solutions for brands that are looking to host streams on their own websites.

While there are plenty of options to choose from, this list just serves as a starting point that you can use to orient yourself.

Dedicated platforms (For high-quality streaming)

This is for businesses that want to go to the next level with more premium features like AI-driven recommendations, analytics, and branded experiences. Live shopping platforms are accessible to everyone, and what makes them unique is discoverability.

Let's dive deeper into learning more about these apps and platforms:

• Livescale: Best for luxury & direct-to-consumer brands that allow brands and retailers to create interactive, shoppable live-streaming experiences. Livescale can easily integrate with other eCommerce platforms, allowing direct real-time purchasing within the live stream.
• ShopShops: This is a livestream shopping app specifically for fashion and beauty products. ShopShops works with stores, independent retailers, brands, and those who are hosting livestream shopping shows. The platform is popular in many regions worldwide, and something you need to know is that ShopShops works as a mobile app.
• Popshop Live/NTWRK is the best choice for hype-driven streetwear and collectibles. This is because it strongly focuses on limited drops and interactive shopping experiences. You also have live auctions & real-time sales where sellers can showcase products and engage buyers through interactive live streams. Sellers have custom storefront options where they brand their own shops and personalize their experiences.
• TalkShopLive: This video commerce platform has a built-in point-of-sale (POS) feature that is included with a video player, making the selling and shopping experience simple and straightforward. When using this platform, all customers can easily find tutorials and shopping guides that allow them to instantly connect with their favorite creators and brands.

Live shopping platform selection checklist

You can use this framework to choose the right platform for your brand:

1. Audience match: Does the platform align with your target demographic (age, interests, behavior)?
2. Integration ease: Can it integrate with your current eCommerce setup and marketing stack?
3. Type of products: Are your products suited to the content format (short-form, demos, high visuals)?
4. Control & ownership: Do you want to own the data and experience, or are you okay with third-party tools?
5. Features needed: Do you need built-in checkout, analytics, multi-hosting, or reply options?
6. Budget: Are there platform fees or commission structures that align with your margins?

Running a livestream sales video

For things to run smoothly, it's best to be prepared and plan out your entire livestream before you press the 'Live' button. You don't want to get stuck on a 3-hour-long video when you have only really put aside an hour.

Here are a few tips to ensure things don't get out of hand:

• Create a run sheet of your key talking points, product demos, any giveaways, Q&As, etc.
• Write a script that you can follow, leaving some space to be flexible, but have a guideline to help if you get stuck.
• Test your internet, audio, and video connection before you go live. Make sure your lighting works and your environment doesn't have any loud noises or distractions.
• Get everyone involved. Assign roles to your team so that one person monitors the chat while the other hosts, and you can have people taking care of tech issues, posting links, etc.
• Don't stress the small stuff! Live events hold the risk of going off script, and you won't be able to hide if something goes wrong. So if something does happen, embrace it and don't let it throw you off your pace.

Your tech setup doesn't need to be expensive, but it needs to be reliable. Here's a basic checklist:

1. Internet: Wired connection or stable Wi-Fi.
2. Camera: HD webcam, DSLR if you want high production value.
3. Microphone: External mic (USB condenser mic or lav mic for clear audio.
4. Lighting: Softbox or ring light, natural light is inconsistent and unpredictable.
5. Streaming software: It's not a bad idea to use the platform's native tools.
6. Backup devices: Have a second device logged in as a viewer to monitor stream quality.

Measure live stream performance

Measuring the success of your live stream helps you improve future events. Here are key metrics to monitor:

• Total viewers/Peak viewers: Tells how much attention you attracted overall and at your best.
• Engagement rate: Likes, comments, shares, reactions, and how much the audience interacted.
• Conversion rate: % of viewers who purchased during or shortly after the stream.
• Average watch time: Gauges how long people stay engaged during the session.
• Click-through rate (CTR): Measures how many people clicked product links shared during the stream.
• Sales volume & revenue: The most direct indicator of success, and how much you actually sold.
• Post-stream replays: Views from people who watched later; very important for long-term impact.

Current live shopping trends

As technology and trends evolve, it's important to keep updated and stay on track so that you don't miss out or lose customers to your competitors. Let's take a closer look at which ones are currently most discussed, or as of now:

AI-driven personalization

71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized services during their interactions. AI-driven personalization is completely changing the personalized service landscape by delivering real-time, tailored experiences that increase engagement, conversions, and customer loyalty.

By leveraging AI, brands can analyze viewer behavior, recommend products dynamically, and optimize interactions for a smoother experience. That being said, let's now take a closer look at how AI enhances personalization:

• Real-time product recommendations: AI analyzes customer preferences, browsing history, and live chat interactions to suggest relevant products during a stream. The ROI potential is higher average order values and lower cart abandonment rates.
• AI-powered chatbots & virtual assistants: These events often generate high volumes of customer inquiries. AI chatbots can handle FAQs, recommend products, and even assist with checkout, reducing friction and improving response times. Implementation complexity is moderate but requires chatbot integration and training datasets. It has affordable entry-level solutions, but enterprise-grade bots that may require higher investments.
• Augmented Reality (AR) & virtual try-ons: AI-powered AR allows customers to virtually "try on" clothes, makeup, or accessories in real-time, making live shopping much more personalized and interactive. Has higher cost & tech complexity, and requires integration with AR platforms or custom development. Its ROI potential can significantly improve conversion rates for fashion and beauty products.

As of now, Amazon Live and TikTok Shop Live are using AI personalization features to deliver high-quality services to customers.

Cross-channel integration

Cross-channel integration refers to connecting multiple customer touchpoints and platforms that include your website, social media channels, live shopping platforms, and customer support systems.

This allows businesses to manage the entire customer journey easily and quickly, from discovering a product to post-purchase support. Cross-channel integration makes sure that your customers have a fulfilling and consistent experience.

Integrating channels makes sure that the customer journey remains smooth, regardless of where they choose to engage with your brand. For example, if a customer asks any questions during a live stream, they can continue the conversation via chat, email, or even on social media.

To make everything simpler, here's a brief overview of how you can integrate your channels step-by-step:

1. Map the customer journey: Identify all the channels your customers use and how they move between them. You can use analytics tools to track channel usage patterns before planning integrations.
2. Choose a central CRM or CDP: A centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP) helps you collect, manage, and sync customer data from all touchpoints.
3. Connect live shopping tools to CRM & eCommerce platform: Ensure your live shopping solution is integrated with your CRM and eCommerce platform to sync purchase behavior and customer profiles. Remember to sync live shopping data to avoid lost insights and missed retargeting opportunities.
4. Align communication channels: Integrate your chat, email, and social DMs so that conversations started on live stream can continue on the customer's preferred channel without missing context.
5. Automate follow-ups & retargeting: Use marketing automation tools to create triggers based on user actions. For example, when someone clicks on a product during a livestream but doesn't buy, you can send them a personalized follow-up via email or SMS.
6. Analyze & optimize: Track performance across channels using unified dashboards or analytics platforms. Use the data to optimize campaigns, product placements, and your overall customer journey.

Micro-influencer collaborations

Micro-influencers are creators with fan bases of between 10K and 100K followers who are becoming essential partners in live shopping strategies. Unlike celebrities or mega-influencers, micro-influencers have highly engaged, niche-driven audiences that trust their recommendations, making them a perfect fit for increasing sales during live commerce events.

Micro-influencers often have a stronger relationship with their audience, leading to higher engagement rates compared to bigger influencers. Their recommendations feel more relatable and genuine, which increases trust and conversions.

Here's how you can find the right micro-influencers:

• Use influencer marketing platforms like Aspire, CreatorIQ, or Upfluence to filter creators by niche, audience location, and engagement rate.
• Search manually on social platforms using relevant hashtags and location tags.
• Ask your existing followers or customers where some may already be content creators who genuinely love your brand.

You've found the influencers, but how can you vet influencers before you collaborate?

• Look at their engagement rate: Try aiming for 2-5% and over engagement as a general benchmark. Don't ever be tricked by higher follower counts. This can sometimes be low engagement signals that show inactivity or bot-heavy audiences.
• Content quality & consistency: Review their video, livestream, and story content to ensure it aligns with your brand's tone and aesthetic.
• Audience fit: Use audience insights to check if their followers match your target demographic.
• Previous partnerships: Ask for case studies or examples of past live shopping or affiliate promotions. Did they generate clicks or conversions?

Now, let's take a closer look at the compensation part:

• Product-only partnerships: Suitable for newer creators or smaller campaigns. Can offer a product in return for a promotion.
• Flat-rate fees: Pay a fixed amount for hosting or co-hosting a live stream.
• Affiliate commissions: Offer a percentage of each sale made through their referral link or unique promo codes.
• Performance bonuses: Incentivize top performance by offering extra pay if they surpass specific KPIs (for example, the number of livestream viewers or the number of sales).

Gamification elements

Using game-like elements in non-game contexts is becoming a major trend in live shopping. This makes the experience more fun, interactive, and rewarding for shoppers. By integrating gamification elements, brands can increase engagement, boost retention, and increase sales.

There are many different gamification elements that you can use:

• Spin-to-win & lucky draws: Viewers participate in a digital wheel spin or random draw during the Live to win discounts, free shipping, or exclusive products. This game creates excitement and encourages viewers to stay longer at the event.
• Trivia & Q&A challenges: Viewers answer brand-related or product-related trivia questions in real time for a chance to win discounts or exclusive deals. This makes sure that customers are more engaged and knowledgeable about the brand while keeping sessions interactive.
• Virtual badges & loyalty rewards: Frequent participants earn virtual badges or loyalty points for attending live shopping streams, making purchases, or interacting in a chat. They encourage repeat attendance and build customer loyalty over time.
• Mystery boxes & surprise rewards: This works by encouraging customers to buy a product during the event to unlock a mystery reward (discounts, free product, exclusive gift).

The future of eCommerce is live

Live shopping is no longer just a trend. It's a powerful sales and engagement strategy that is reshaping the eCommerce landscape entirely. By combining live videos with online shopping, brands can create an interactive and real-time experience that will improve conversions, build trust, and deepen customer relationships.

There are multiple platforms to try this on, and plenty of examples and case studies to guide you along the way that will help you integrate live shopping into your eCommerce strategy. If you're still unsure of whether this will work for you, there's always the option to do a bit of market research with your current customer database to see if, when, and where they would support your live selling.

From multiple-channel integrations to hiring influencers to help you, live-streaming eCommerce is now becoming the new normal, and it's more possible than ever to make it happen.

Now it's time for you to plan your own live shopping event.

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