Omni Channel Approach for Live Commerce

You would have come across these two terms: Omni-channel and Live Commerce. But omni-channel in live commerce? What does that mean? Read on…

Evolution of Multi-channel

The retail landscape has undergone a big shift in the last decade. Two things have triggered this change in a big way. First the massive penetration of internet and smartphones that has made the online world ubiquitous for almost every individual on this planet, and second the humongous popularity of social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram etc. that have got the people of all age groups hooked on to various forms of social media content.

The erstwhile models in the brick and mortar space where brands were having not only their physical stores but also shelf space in large format stores & hypermarkets have undergone a sea change with brands forced to take shelf space in online channels like e-commerce portals and social media platforms.

This led the brands to adopt a different multi-channel approach to serve its customers present across channels, be it off-line stores, own e-commerce portal or third party e-commerce portals and various social media platforms like Instagram. But this had its own challenges as the customers needed to be told a unified story and the overall experience across these channel needed to be seamless.

Here comes omni-channel

The term omni-channel is a?multichannel?approach to sales that seeks to provide customers with a seamless shopping experience, whether they're shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, by telephone, or in a?brick-and-mortar?store. An omnichannel approach essentially means there's integration?between distribution, promotion and communication?channels?on the back end, and the customer gets a unified messaging and brand experience irrespective of the channel that he or she has knocked the door on.

Advent of Live commerce

The pandemic driven behavioral changes and the massive adoption of social media platforms also has led to increased adoption of social commerce that at best can be summarized as the use of social media as a means to drive sales or commerce. Social media helps buyers to connect virtually with brands, share experiences and also engage with fellow community members thus making the overall shopping experience immersive and personalized. Use of live streams within the social media channels and web portals to engage buyers in real time and drive higher conversions is an intrinsic element of social commerce and is broadly known as live commerce.

Omni-channel in Live Commerce

As more and more people are getting used to the idea of virtually connecting with community over video calls, be it business meetings or teaching-learning or medical consultations, live stream driven e-commerce is going to grow exponentially in the next decade or so. As per industry estimates, 20% of e-commerce sales in India is going to happen through live commerce by 2030.

Having said this, brands need to quickly adopt an omni-channel approach to live commerce as well. They need to think of ways on how they not only simultaneously connect ‘live’ with their target audiences who may be coming on various social media channels and on various other online properties like their own portals or third party portals, but also give a seamless experience to the buyers moving from one channel to another during a live stream.

Case in point, a buyer may be on Facebook when the brand goes live thus popping up a notification on the buyer’s screen. Buyer joins the live stream and during the show wants to quickly move to an e-commerce portal to check reviews & deals while not losing sight of the live stream, and then makes a decision to add to cart and checkout on the e-commerce portal itself, thus having a seamless experience! And imagine this happening across devices (one can move from an iPhone to a mac), across networks (4G to home broadband) and across various channels where the buyers are logged into.

Possibilities are unlimited. Brands need to adopt and adapt to this impending reality and not only build live commerce as a ‘must have’ part of their ‘go-to-market’, but also bake in this omni-channel model to cater to various category of buyers that may be sitting across channels in the virtual online world.