The Advantages Of Using YouTube For Live Shopping
Live shopping, or livestream shopping, has lately taken the world of e-commerce by storm.
It blends entertainment, product discovery and purchasing with a real-time feedback loop where consumers can get recommendations, interact and ask questions. Live commerce can also be a game changer for brands as the conversion rates have proven to be up to ten times higher than in conventional e-commerce.
When looking into the possibilities of live shopping as an online retailer, it makes a lot of sense to use your already existing YouTube channel and leverage the reach and accessibility of the world’s most popular video streaming platform. However, many live shopping services require you to use their proprietary video players to create shoppable live streams. The complexity and cost to get started have made many store owners hesitant to jump on the bandwagon.
But it doesn’t have to be difficult and expensive — and it’s fully feasible to do it with YouTube.
The fact is that you, with very little money and time invested, will be able to pull this off just fine on your own. To get going you will need four things:
- A laptop with a webcam — to broadcast from.
- A Shopify store — to sell your stuff.
- A YouTube account — to handle the actual live stream.
- A Stackend account — to put it all together.
Check out our equipment guide for tips on great gear in varying price ranges here.
The advantages of using YouTube and Stackend instead of a home-grown video player by far outweigh the disadvantages. Let’s do a comparison:
A big part of driving traffic to live shopping events has relied on the good will of influencers, as well as their willingness to take your money. The trade is basically that they push your live shopping event in their social media channels such as Instagram and TikTok. But wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to lead viewers to your (or their) existing YouTube channel? And of course, to be able to notify all YouTube channel subscribers automatically when the live shopping starts.
Livestreaming now accounts for 10% of Chinese e-commerce revenue, according to the management consultancy firm McKinsey. And according to Coresight Research, the U.S. livestream shopping market is expected to reach $25 billion by 2023.
