Before going live in front of your audience, there are a few steps you need to complete to create a successful live shopping session. We’ve covered these seven steps already. Now, let’s go in-depth on how to prepare your live shopping session to reach your goals.
There are several aspects that you need to take into consideration when preparing your live shopping session. Who is it aimed at? Which products to promote? Who is hosting the show? When is the best time to go live? What are the logistics necessary for this particular session?
Now, let’s take a deep dive into each of these questions. And try to find the correct answer. While the answer will often depend on the specifics of each business, the guidelines still apply at a general level.
Deciding what products to showcase during the shopping event
Theoretically, there is no limit regarding the diversity of products you can showcase during a live shopping event. But realistically speaking, you should limit those numbers based on the time you want to allocate for the session. Do you plan to go live for 30 minutes? Or a 2-hour session will work better for your audience?
But the number of different products you decide to showcase during the session is not crucial. However, their level of relevance to each other is. Products that complement each other will be relevant for your customers. And to your business, as this is a sure way to increase the average checkout ticket.
One of the main reasons buyers love live shopping is that it gives them online access to personalized shopping experiences. They can interact with shop assistants from the comfort of their homes. And even if the experience engages large audiences, it still creates intimate shopping experiences for each of the viewers. Live shopping is fun, but its biggest upside is in the fact that customers get a better understanding of your products. And if needed, their questions can be answered on the spot by a professional.
Live shopping allows you to recommend products that complement other products. Live, during the shopping journey, when it matters the most.
Defining the audience when preparing your live shopping session
Defining the audience of your next session is well-connected to the products you decide to showcase during it. For this reason, we will avoid numbering these steps, as each of the first two steps could be the starting point of your preparation.
Defining the audience is crucial to any project or business. You’ve probably analyzed your customer base, created a buyer’s persona, and shaped your messages accordingly. Usually, the audience for a live shopping session is even more niched. As we have discussed in the previous step, there are only as many products that can be showcased during a live show. And you need to make sure that you are doing it in front of the right audience.
When is the best time to go live?
There is no universal answer to this question. But one thing is for sure – the best time for a live shopping session is the one communicated by your audience. How can you check? For example, you can check to see when your website benefits from the most traffic. In which time intervals is your audience active on social media?
Knowing your audience will come in handy when scheduling your live shopping sessions. Identifying an overall live shopping golder hour is difficult. But having the right information about your audience will help you identify the right days and hours when your sessions will gather the largest audiences.
We’ve supported live sessions that took place on each given day of the week and tested all timeframes. And while we still think for sure that the best time to go live depends on each audience, here are some insights:
Although noon is the best time for online workshops, it doesn’t perform that great for live shopping sessions
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays evenings are preferred by most companies as their audiences are more likely to join the experiences. But Monday evenings are also proving to be a good choice for sellers.
While weekends are reserved for time spent with our families, Saturday mornings could be a good choice for a brand targeting young parents.
Who will host the live shopping show?
Your products, your audience, and the host of the live shopping session should all be connected. Thus if you want to create a relevant experience.
Based on our experience, we’ve identified 3 ways brands are using hosts in order to deliver their live shopping experiences:
Live shopping sessions hosted by a sales assistant. Extremely efficient when you want to deliver a specific message to your audience. This message may be related to how to use the product to make the most of it. Or related to the story that stands behind the product or the brand itself. Although this kind of message can be delivered by people outside the brand as well, you will want to inspire authenticity and authority. And in this case, a brand representative is the best option.
Using influencers for your live shopping events. Influencers are already familiar with live streaming, are fun, and have large audiences. It’s natural to bring them on board. Associating with an influencer will help you reach new audiences and will benefit from a trust transfer.
A mix of the two above. To keep your existing audience engaged and reach new potential customers you can invite influencers to brand-hosted live video shopping sessions. You can also invite partners or existing customers to share their experiences with your products.
No matter who will be the host of the show, this is a very important step when preparing your live shopping session. Once you cut these 4 items off your list you are ready to promote your live shopping session.
Now that you have started communicating your next event, it’s time to check the technical aspects as well. Sure, the live shopping software will take most of the load, but there are a few things that you still need to be aware of.
Preparing the hardware for your live shopping session
From a hardware perspective, things are not as complicated as one may think. With Streams.live, you can go live using your smartphone or laptop. And the set-up will not take more than just a few minutes and can host it from anywhere you would like.
But at the same time, you can also create more complex set-ups and build your own live shopping studio, like the one we have in one of our offices.
But even so, there are just a few things that you need. A good camera, some lights, and maybe a microphone (or a lavalier microphone) if you are using an external camera. But if you’re looking to go more in-depth on the hardware matter we’ve prepared a free brochure. Download it to see how to use lighting in your favor, what different types of cameras you may want to look into, and how to make sure everybody hears you out well.
Make sure that you have a stable internet connection and that you are not in a noisy place. You’re looking to create an outstanding shopping experience for your audience.
Regardless of what hardware you decide to use, run a test before actually going live. It will save you a lot of trouble.
Final words
Preparation is crucial – it makes the difference between failure and success. Luckily, preparing for a live shopping session is not as difficult as it sounds. You already have all the needed elements, you just need to put them together. And deliver the shopping experience customers are looking for.
