How to do live shopping: A livestream selling guide

Masooma Memon
is a freelance writer for SaaS and lover of to-do lists. When she's not writing, she usually has her head buried in a business book or fantasy novel. Connect with her on
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Masooma Memon
Learn how to unlock video livestreaming to create strategies for selling products on TikTok, Facebook, and more with "live shopping" campaigns.

In 2022, live shopping contributed an estimated $17 billion in sales in 2022. But by 2026, that figure is forecasted to account for $55 billion in sales. McKinsey estimates live commerce could account to 20% of all ecommerce in just a few short years.

(And no — we're not talking QVC or cheesy 24-hour shop-a-thons.)

Instead, live shopping is a hybrid event that captures attention with limited drops and timed offers while entertaining and immersing customers in your brand. In China, live shopping has dominated the landscape since Alibaba pioneered Taobao Live in 2016, but Western ecomm darlings are slower to adopt.

Our take? Live shopping is about to blow up. It's time for your brand to start thinking about your live shopping strategy now — before everyone else hops on the bandwagon — to grow your engagement and boost sales.

However, you can't just go live and expect the sales to start rolling in. There's more to hosting a successful livestream beyond showcasing your products. Instead, it takes lots of creativity paired with a conversational, playful (read: not salesy) style.

What is live shopping?

Live shopping or livestream shopping refers to using live video to feature your products in real-time to encourage viewers to buy from you.

You can either go live on social channels like YouTube or Facebook or host livestreams on your website.

What are the benefits of live selling?

From offering you a way to standout in the noise to connecting with your customers in real-time and growing sales, live shopping offers a ton of benefits. Let’s explore them below: 

Engage your target audience 

Livestream shopping lets you have two-way conversations with your target audience in real-time.

“Live shopping gives retailers the opportunity to create an engaging environment where customers can get familiar with the brand and its products without having to physically visit a store,” shares Robert Hoffmann, the Marketing Manager at CashbackHero. 

Grow your community

By regularly hosting live sessions, you can tap into live shopping as not only a reliable channel for customer acquisition and retention but also community building and gathering customer feedback.

To this end, make sure your live sessions focus on entertaining and providing value alongside offering attendee-only discount codes to make viewers feel like a part of something special. 

Increase sales

By showcasing your products and educating your viewers about them in ways that text-based format alone can’t, live shopping offers you a close alternative to physical shopping. In turn, this encourages sales.

Walmart’s Senior Director and Head of Brand Experiences and Partnerships, Kim Tunick, notes livestream shopping helps them build brand trust and grow sales.  

“[Livestreaming] allows us to have valuable, fun two-way conversations with our customers and remove friction in their shopping experience. We approach it as: sell first, entertain second, but in some instances, depending on the product or host or theme, that might even flip.” 

Offer a memorable brand experience

By allowing you to show your brand’s human side and connecting with customers, live shopping lets you improve customer experience.

As Arpan Podduturi, the Director of Product Retail and Messaging at Shopify points out,

“The more we can connect online and offline, the better the customer experience. And that ultimately gives retailers and main-street brands a chance to survive and thrive going forward.”
Arpan Podduturi, the Director of Product Retail and Messaging at Shopify

Thankfully, livestream shopping gives you a unique way to connect with and build deeper, more lasting relationships with customers. 

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Why you might want to try a live shopping campaign

On top of leveraging the benefits that it offers, you can launch a live shopping campaign or make it a regular part of your marketing strategy for the following reasons:

  • You’re not afraid to try something new
  • You have extra inventory you want to promote
  • You have a loyal audience on at least one social channel
  • You want to build brand awareness and break through the noise

Remember: Although most believe that live shopping is ideal for products that lend themselves to impulse buying, the full truth is: live selling is a helpful way to connect and sell in different industries.

It’s why you’ll see everyone from solo creators like @kimmiebbags to brands like Benefits Cosmetics using live shopping.

In fact, businesses like BankingGeek in the finance industry plan to tap into live shopping too. “During each livestream, we’ll review different financial products like credit cards, insurance policies and investment plans so that our customers can get an overview of what’s available in the market,” shares the Founder and CEO, Max Benz.

“We also want to provide promotional offers so that viewers can take advantage of discounts or freebies for signing up for certain products or services. Finally, we’ll address any questions or concerns that viewers may have about their financial situation or options available to them so they can make informed decisions.” 

How to create a live shopping strategy in 5 steps

Planning your live shopping events helps you set your audience’s expectations, create hype around them, and get the eyeballs you deserve. But you shouldn’t script everything down to the tee to maintain your authenticity.

Put simply, plan enough so you know what content you want to share and how you want to increase audience engagement while keeping things conversational.

With that, here’s how to begin with livestreaming ecommerce in five easy steps: 

Step 1: Work out a format for your livestream shopping session

A format prepares you for how you’ll host your livestream and sets your audience’s expectations.

You can always shake things up in each episode to maintain an element of surprise but be sure to pick a dedicated time for your sessions so attendees know when to join.

For the format itself, ask yourself whether you want to take an educational approach or entertaining one. Or if you want to take a product-first approach. The answer depends on what you’re selling.

Aldo’s live shopping pilot, for example, followed a product educational format where Los Angeles-based entertainer, Nate Wyatt and celebrity stylist Mimi Cuttrell paired to share their style tips for wearing various Aldo accessories and shoes.

You can try any creative approach though. Petro, for example, hosted a live dog show to encourage pet adoptions. 

Step 2: Select a friendly host for your show

You can always collaborate with influencers and brand ambassadors to co-host the live show. The upside to this is that you can tap into their influence to drive viewers to your stream.

One idea is to bring interested customers on your live show to grow your social proof. Tommy Hilfiger used this tactic — inviting customers to share their favorite pieces from its 2021 spring collection.

Take advantage of Vimeo's innovative solutions like the AI-powered script generator, video prompter tool, automated captioning tool, and AI translation service for seamless video production.

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Intro to shoppable video | What is live shopping?