What is B2B ecommerce? Everything you need to know
When you think of “customer experience,” what comes to mind? People, right? Specifically, consumers. Retail customers. That’s easy; the ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
When you think of “customer experience,” what comes to mind? People, right? Specifically, consumers. Retail customers. That’s easy; the ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
A potential customer is about to land on the home page of your ecommerce platform, curious to see what cool ...
Search and Discovery writer
By now, everyone’s had the opportunity to experiment with AI tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney and ponder their inner ...
Director, Product Marketing
Search has been around for a while, to the point that it is now considered a standard requirement in many ...
Senior Machine Learning Engineer
With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies enabling services such as Alexa, Google search, and self-driving cars, the ...
VP Corporate Marketing
It’s no secret that B2B (business-to-business) transactions have largely migrated online. According to Gartner, by 2025, 80 ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
Twice a year, B2B Online brings together industry leaders to discuss the trends affecting the B2B ecommerce industry. At the ...
Director of Product Marketing & Strategy
This is Part 2 of a series that dives into the transformational journey made by digital merchandising to drive positive ...
Benoit Reulier &
Reshma Iyer
Get ready for the ride: online shopping is about to be completely upended by AI. Over the past few years ...
Director, User Experience & UI Platform
Remember life before online shopping? When you had to actually leave the house for a brick-and-mortar store to ...
Search and Discovery writer
If you imagine pushing a virtual shopping cart down the aisles of an online store, or browsing items in an ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
Remember the world before the convenience of online commerce? Before the pandemic, before the proliferation of ecommerce sites, when the ...
Search and Discovery writer
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just the stuff of scary futuristic movies; it’s recently burst into the headlines ...
Search and Discovery writer
Imagine you are the CTO of a company that has just undergone a massive decade long digital transformation. You’ve ...
CTO @Algolia
Did you know that the tiny search bar at the top of many ecommerce sites can offer an outsized return ...
Director, Digital Marketing
Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly moved from hot topic to everyday life. Now, ecommerce businesses are beginning to clearly see ...
VP of Product
We couldn’t be more excited to announce the availability of our breakthrough product, Algolia NeuralSearch. The world has stepped ...
Chief Executive Officer and Board Member at Algolia
The ecommerce industry has experienced steady and reliable growth over the last 20 years (albeit interrupted briefly by a global ...
CTO @Algolia
Dec 1st 2021 ecommerce
On many ecommerce websites and mobile apps, it’s common to see user reviews of various products sold on these sites. Such user-generated content offers site visitors an authentic personal opinion and feedback of people who have already purchased and tested the products before.
User reviews play a critical role in shoppers’ ability to make a purchase decision. User-generated reviews featuring pictures or videos of the products make these products and sites that sell them more trustworthy. Yet, 34% percent of ecommerce sites don’t allow users to upload images along with the review.
Today, user-generated reviews are transforming from an advertising tool supporting commerce into an independent sub-industry of live-streaming ecommerce. In 2016, Chinese ecommerce platforms began experimenting with live-streaming ecommerce. By 2019, live-streamed ecommerce had become so competitive that large players began to consolidate the space, leveraging Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) to accelerate sales. (Sources: ARK Investment Management LLC, EqualOcean).
We can see that celebrities and brand associates used in conventional advertising and marketing strategies are currently perceived less as a trustworthy source of information than influencers and real users on, for example, Social Media. For instance, companies such as rewardStyle (LKT) are specializing in connecting influencers with brands. Currently, rewardStyle is serving over one million brands and 150,000 creators who are constantly generating original content for these brands. This is just a single example of a strong growing trend towards user-generated content in brand promotion and advertising.
(Source: ARK Investment Management LLC)
In 2019, Kim Kardashian, a popular US influencer, sold 15,000 bottles of perfume within minutes of her TaoBao live-streaming shopping event. 13 million viewers watched this live video session and 1,000 bottles were already sold in the first few seconds of the event.
(Source: The Star)
The live-streaming ecommerce trend is now spreading to the rest of the world. In the US, the trend is taking off rapidly due to the almost exponential correlation between ecommerce sales and social media monthly active users.
(Source: ARK Investment Management LLC)
The social aspect of ecommerce is becoming adopted as an essential feature by leading ecommerce marketplaces, such as Alibaba and Amazon. For instance, Amazon has recently launched Amazon Live, with live-streaming video product reviews. The recommended products are displayed directly below the video or inside the video frame, with the interactive chat available for direct communication with the influencers during each event.
(Source: Amazon Live)
Live-streaming video recommendations are featured under each user-generated live-streaming video:
(Source: Amazon Live)
Alibaba’s TaoBao live-streaming drove $6 billion USD in sales during the 2020 Singles Day event, a shopping festival comparable to the Black Friday and Cyber Week events in the US (Source: Forbes).
(Source: Forbes)
Live-streaming commerce market projection is showing rapid growth. From “nice to have”, it is quickly turning into “must have” functionality. For ecommerce businesses, especially marketplaces, dealing with extremely large product catalogs, live streaming can exponentially increase product discovery and boost sales.
(Source: ARK Investment Management LLC)
Live-streaming commerce has grown exponentially in China and is now taking the rest of the world by storm. The social aspect of shopping is rapidly transforming from a “nice to have” to a “must have” capability for the ecommerce industry. Live-streaming commerce market projection shows tremendous growth globally, and retailers need to leverage this trend to increase product discovery, boost sales on their platforms, and take their online shopping experience to the next level – live stream shopping.
Product Manager
Powered by Algolia Recommend