The future of e-commerce is personalized, interactive, AI-driven, and live.

I just came back from another big in-person tech conference and after listening to many panels, keynotes, and talking to countless vendors and brands, I decided to share some of the insights and takeaways when it comes to e-commerce and specifically live commerce. 

First of all, I am not going to jump on the wild Metaverse or NFT horse today. Let’s stay focused on now, the other meta future is not yet here for me and I don’t see myself or many of you wearing big glasses and headsets for hours any time soon. Robert Scoble, you are an exception, my friend.  

E-commerce and live video streaming have come a long way in the last 25 years. You can now open an online store and start selling on Shopify or Instagram in hours. You can even live stream with a click of a button on your smartphone and have an HD live video streamed to millions. When combined together, these two technologies are even more interesting and powerful. 

Last year, China did an estimated $300B in sales on their popular Livestream Shopping marketplaces and apps. This year, they could reach $500B in sales. Livestream shopping has its big benefits for sure. Engagement is much higher, users spend more, and return less. Live Shopping increases AOV, LTV, ROI, and loyalty while lowering user churn and product returns. 

Many US social and e-commerce companies have been trying to jump on the bandwagon too, VCs have invested millions at billion-dollar evaluations (Andreesen invested in Whatnot at a $1.5B evaluation, American Express at Firework, and Vitruvian Partners became the largest stakeholder in Bambuser), but most vendors are just trying to copy the China model and each other, without understand even how the US market works or trying to innovate with all the technology available to them. I have been watching this space for a while, and I am not impressed. The majority focus on the fashion and beauty verticals, with very little push outside these boxes. Twitter, Walmart, Facebook, and TikTok, are all going full speed ahead, but copying Taobao’s features and GTM is simply not enough or does not work here. 

Accenture estimates that the global TAM for social commerce will reach $1.2T by 2025 with a $99B market in the US (25% CAGR) while India will have a $17B GMV with 59% CAGR.  

At ShopTalk in Vegas a few weeks ago, Livestream shopping was a topic on and off the stage by big retail brands, vendors, VCs, and industry analysts. Retail leaders voted that LiveStream shopping was way more important to them than the metaverse in the next 12 months.  

Andrew Busby (@andrewbusby) Audience voting on how important will the metaverse vs livestreaming be in the US in the next 12 months? Seems about right. #TRI2022 #shoptalk2022 @SoftwareAG 11:20 AM · Mar 30, 2022

Gartner recently also found that 26% of senior marketing leaders are focused on live streaming retail as a priority right now, and Gartner analyst Ant Duffin expects that number to double in the next 12 to 18 months. 

My work in the past two decades has given me a unique perspective on what the future of e-commerce will look like and what needs to be done for live video engagement and e-commerce to be successful here, now, and in the future. You see, I work from one of the top user engagement platforms in the world; MoEngage. We serve billions of personalized messages to billions of users every day. We help small and global brands to activate, retain, and grow their customers. I personally have been building e-commerce websites since the mid-'90s and on top, I have been live streaming for more than 25 years and have done iconic live events like the Steve Jobs/Apple keynotes from Macworld in 2002 to pioneering mobile, web, and TV streaming for Google, MSFT, HP, UN, NHL, and BBC. 

 So, what needs to happen for LiveStream Shopping and e-Commerce to work in the US you may ask?! There are several very important things to consider when planning a successful Livestream Commerce for your customers:

1. Integrate your Martech, e-commerce, AI, and payment solutions with a modern LiveStream Shopping headless and no-code platform to achieve a true intelligent Live Commerce experience. Make sure they utilize a regional or global CDN where your customers are based.  
2. Use predictive segmentation and personalization for targeting the right buyers at the right moment of their user journey. Use your customer data and CDP to better target your buyers.
3. Brands need to integrate Livestream Shopping with their own websites and apps for B2C and D2C targeting and engagement. 
4. Modern LiveStream Shopping uses WebRTC super low latency video that can be streamed in the user browsers and does not require an app download and can be launched from social, email, or an SMS. 
5. AI-driven product recommendations and personalization will help your brand engage and sell even more products and services.
6.  Make sure to have real-time and two-way e-commerce product integration and live analytics when offering goods and services to your customers. You don’t want to continue selling goods that are not in stock. 
7. Utilize smart Chatbots for conversational commerce for better user engagement during your Livestream shows. 
8. Brands need to own the user data of their customers, and using TikTok or Instagram is not helping them achieve this. Brands can still use the social platforms to engage their users, but they should use and control the Livestream shopping experience on their own digital properties.   
9. Brands should not get stuck in buying expensive annual streaming bandwidth and event consulting packages, but explore new biz models for revenue sharing where both the Live Commerce vendors and the brand grow together as their sales revenue grows too. 
10. Selling fashion and beauty goods is easy and old. Think bigger, think about renting, bidding, selling tickets and services, or offering digital subscriptions and booking appointments. Think outside the box of retail selling. 
11. Make sure your LiveStream Commerce partner has local customer success teams around the clock and is not just offering email or chat next biz day support.  

No specific LiveStream Commerce vendor provides all of these advanced and innovative services on the market, but some come close. Some integrate with other top platforms like MoEngage to provide a true customer journey engagement. When thinking about your e-commerce and marketing strategy, look for the best of new breed vendors and give them a call, get a free demo, and test it yourself.

I would recommend that you ping the guys at tallio.io for sure, but I am biased as their investor and advisor ;) Ping me and I will be happy to tell share more about the engagement space and the future of social and live commerce. 

Vassil Mladjov is an experienced Silicon Valley entrepreneur, angel investor, and startup advisor who has innovated the streaming space for more than two decades. He founded several enterprise B2B and B2C startups and was a Gartner tech go-to-market analyst. Currently, Vassil runs strategy and growth at MoEngage, a leading global intelligent user engagement platform, he is a strategic investor in several small startups, and an active growth mentor and adviser to European startups. In his spare time, Vassil loves to cook, walk his Catahouila Leaoper dog Blue, and video blog about food, animals, the NBA, and startups.