It was thought that the livestreaming industry had “cooled down”, but unexpectedly, the heat of livestreaming industry soared again at the beginning of 2018. Similarly, as another branch of the livestreaming industry, game livestreaming has experienced a great reshuffle in the livestreaming industry and is still hot.
On the contrary, compared with live answering and game live broadcasting, e-commerce live broadcasting, which is also closely related to live broadcasting, seems to have never been favored by most users, and has been flat in the online live broadcasting market. The reason among them, have to start from the three respective domain characteristics.
1. Live answer: Easy to operate and with generous bonuses, it is a popular live broadcast platform with social fission
It has to be said that the recent live answering of this kind of “coin” game can be said to earn enough netizens eyeballs. There are no lack of netease, Toutiao, Baidu, 360 and other giants involved, and the prize money for answering questions has increased from hundreds of thousands to millions, attracting the attention of many netizens.
In a short period of time, there have been numerous articles on the Internet about the praise and criticism of live answering, the future development, and how long live answering will be popular. This live answering business, which has not been born for a long time in China, has made the capital crazy about it.
But its sudden surge in popularity is surprising and understandable.
First of all, there is the temptation of high prize money for livestreaming answers. Players who participate in the answer can share a large sum of prize money with others as long as they answer all the questions correctly. There is nothing wrong with the popularity of livestreaming with simple process and high prize money. Secondly, the participation threshold of live answering is low, and the social fission that you can get resurrection cards by inviting friends also contributes to the high user flow of live answering platforms.
This also shows that livestream answering questions with a lot of star aura, no matter how long it can survive in the future, at least at the present stage, it is really popular.
Ii. Game live broadcast: To meet the spiritual needs of users and become the traffic guarantee of live broadcast platforms
If participating in the livestreaming answers is to gain financial benefits, then watching the livestreaming games is more for the pursuit of spiritual needs.
This spiritual pursuit is generally divided into two types. One is to learn game skills and experience lessons by watching the game anchor’s appearance and playing methods, so as to improve the game ability. The other is that users themselves are interested in a certain game, but cannot play it in person due to work or other reasons, so they can only satisfy their pursuit of the game by watching the live broadcast of the game.
Attracted by these two conditions, many users are more and more in favor of game live broadcasting. At the same time, to a certain extent, it is the game that has made some live broadcasting platforms. For example, with the rise of games such as Honor of Kings in the early stage and PubG later, many live streaming platforms such as Huajiao and Ingke have launched game channels. Data show that games contributed more than 70 percent of the traffic and revenue of traditional live streaming platforms in 2017, especially the recent popularity of “Eat Chicken” games, which have become an important guarantee of traffic on live streaming platforms.
In fact, live streaming of games was born before 2016, which is called the first year of live streaming. Until the emergence of all kinds of live streaming platforms and the emergence of all kinds of phenomenal games, games have become the live streaming field that all live streaming platforms want to get involved in due to their deep attention from users.
Three: e-commerce live broadcast: directly hit the pain point of consumers, e-commerce platform content chemical tool
With the rise of the live streaming industry in 2016, the new form of live streaming composed of “e-commerce + live streaming” has made many traditional e-commerce companies smell new business opportunities, and become another way for these traditional e-commerce companies to increase trading volume in the face of the fading of traffic dividend.
From the perspective of e-commerce industry and users, the characteristics and reasons for the emergence of e-commerce live broadcasting are reflected in the following two aspects.
First, e-commerce live broadcasting is actually one of the channels for e-commerce industry to move towards content. Traditional e-commerce industry can interpret the content of original goods through live broadcasting and transfer the value of goods to users. Secondly, users’ pursuit of high-quality products or fashionable products is hidden behind watching e-commerce live broadcast. This also reveals consumers’ pain points in shopping, that is, they are eager to know whether a certain product is suitable for them, or how to choose a suitable product. By watching the live broadcast of e-commerce, users may get some effective suggestions.
However, as we all know, the live broadcasting industry has entered the second half, but the e-commerce live broadcasting has not been able to fire up. Even though many e-commerce platforms have entered the field of live broadcasting, such as Taobao, Jumei Youping, Mogujie and Miya, they are more inclined to regard it as a traffic tool for shops.
E-commerce livestreaming is difficult to explode, which has something to do with the natural consumption nature of the industry
Through the comparison of the above three, we can further clarify why it is difficult for e-commerce livestreaming to suddenly become popular in a short time or be favored by users for a long time like livestreaming answers and games.
Let’s start with the live quiz. To put it simply, if the audience answers all the questions correctly, they will benefit from it. Why not? Watch the game live. Users can get some game skills or achieve the purpose of leisure and entertainment by watching the live broadcast of the game. It is natural that the game is popular today.
On the contrary, users watch e-commerce live broadcast with a strong purpose of consumption, that is, watching e-commerce live broadcast is to improve the quality of consumption, while participating in the live broadcast answers is to obtain money, and watching games live broadcast is to obtain game experience and skills. By contrast, it’s easy to see which of the three goals will capture the attention of the majority of users.
However, these only show the similarities and differences of the three types of livestreaming. Based on the analysis of the industry’s shortcomings of e-commerce livestreaming, we may get more insights on why e-commerce livestreaming has been performing poorly in the field of livestreaming.
In the transition from content to consumption, e-commerce live streaming platforms still face many challenges
The main content of e-commerce live broadcast is more focused on clothing matching, beauty makeup and other content. In other words, it is difficult for consumers to make purchase decisions within a short period of time. By watching live broadcast, the purchase probability can be correspondingly increased. This is a process from the understanding of content to the consumption level. However, in the transition process of these two levels, e-commerce live streaming platforms are faced with many obstacles in the industry.
Looking at the straight-up conversion rate for live streaming, achieving a satisfactory GMV doesn’t seem easy. In June last year, a set of data from Jumei Youpin live show that during a period of time, in the live broadcast room with the largest number of online viewers of 32,000, only about 8 orders were traded in the comment section, which is actually a relatively low conversion rate. It can also be seen that e-commerce live broadcasting does not seem to be of much help to the traffic conversion rate of Jumei Youpin and other platforms. Perhaps it can also be seen that e-commerce live broadcasting does not play much of a wake-up role for jumei Youpin and other platforms with an increasingly low sense of presence.
The above perspective can also be extended to the training of e-commerce anchors. As a Taobao anchor teaching at Jiangsu Normal University said, it is not easy to be an e-commerce livestreamer. Different from traditional online celebrity anchors, e-commerce anchors have to go through a lot of complicated preparations before broadcasting, from selecting commodities to discussing various coupons with merchants. After that, I had to summarize selling points and sort out all kinds of feedback information, and the working pressure was not small.
Therefore, it is not easy to develop an e-commerce anchor, let alone an e-commerce anchor favored by users, which is also an industry problem faced by many e-commerce live streaming platforms. Although the purpose of users watching e-commerce live broadcast is to acquire consumption knowledge, perhaps to develop user stickiness, more say should be given to anchors.
For many e-commerce live streaming platforms, the inherent lack of user stickiness is also one of the factors hindering their development. First, let’s take a look at a set of data. According to The data of Taobao Live broadcast, there are more than ten million users watching the live broadcast content, and there are nearly 2,000 live broadcasts every day. Taobao live broadcast is becoming an important entrance for many businesses’ marketing.
However, as taobao’s content ecology, the flow of taobao live broadcast will follow the seasonal fluctuation of the flow of e-commerce, so as to encounter the flow trough period that is difficult to predict. After experiencing double 11 and double 12 two promotional festivals, due to the large overdraft of consumer purchasing power, taobao direct broadcast flow will inevitably decline to different degrees, which also shows that Taobao live may also be difficult to save the seasonal market decline.
At the same time, due to the decline of users’ purchasing power, the original accumulated user engagement is likely to weaken, and it is possible that new users will be needed to return to the previous good state. After all, for some consumers, watching a live broadcast means spending more time, which is enough time to browse through multiple image pages, and it may not be possible to get valuable content from watching a live broadcast.
Therefore, for e-commerce livestreaming platforms, whether to directly tap potential users who are willing to watch the livestreaming of e-commerce, or to invest money on a large scale to cultivate the market, is a problem worthy of in-depth consideration. Perhaps the most effective way to do this is if the platform can provide enough content to make users want to spend time watching it. At the same time, it should be noted that, in line with the form of many Internet businesses, e-commerce live broadcasting has also quietly entered the era of oligarchy. Except for taobao Live broadcasting, Mogujie Live broadcasting and other e-commerce live broadcasting platforms, many e-commerce live broadcasting seems to have been in an unknown state. So far, we have not seen the rise of small e-commerce live broadcasting platforms.
However, there is no denying that e-commerce live broadcast has certain reference value for specific consumer groups. Just because of the limited guidance and promotion efforts, coupled with the market’s industry particularity, the market has not been able to fire up.
E-commerce live broadcasting to fire, we must pay attention to “word of mouth” culex
Compared with livestreaming questions and games, e-commerce livestreaming actually has great potential for commercialization. However, how to tap the potential of commercialization? In addition to the accumulation of word of mouth in the early stage, we can also improve the service quality with the help of artificial intelligence.
First of all, from the initial accumulation of word of mouth, for the platform to strive for differentiated play. No matter what type of live broadcast, the accumulation of public praise on the platform is essential. For e-commerce live broadcast, it requires not only the accumulation of public praise on the live broadcast content, but also the long-term accumulation of public praise on the products, so as to form a benign live broadcast ecology. E-commerce livestreaming needs to pay attention to that livestreaming content is important, but product value and quality should be put in the first place, which is the basic principle to gain users’ trust.
In this case, the platform should set up representative live broadcast content from the perspective of pursuing differentiation. In this way, the double-effect support of reputation and differentiation may lay a foundation for the success of e-commerce live broadcast.
Secondly, in the process of livestreaming, strengthening interaction with consumers is also an effective way to increase the stickiness of livestreaming. The most effective way to accumulate user stickiness may be to increase the interaction between anchors and users. Such real-time interaction can not only improve users’ sense of existence, but also enhance users’ recognition of anchors and platforms, thus improving the conversion rate of live broadcasts. In addition, in order to increase the stickiness of livestreaming users and attract new users, the livestreaming platform may also use artificial intelligence algorithms to analyze users’ viewing preferences and improve the efficiency and ability of service users.
In general, it is difficult for e-commerce live broadcasting to reach the same level of popularity as live answering and game live broadcasting, which also reveals its stronger commercialized characteristics and a series of shortcomings encountered in the development of the industry. However, these shortcomings are not insurmountable, but need long-term accumulation of platform reputation.
All in all, answer livestreaming, game livestreaming and e-commerce livestreaming are all products of the “livestreaming +” era. In the future, it remains to be seen who will have the last laugh. It is obvious to all that in the Internet era, a product suddenly becomes popular in a short period of time. There are always many people chasing it, and after a period of time, the crowd quietly dispersed. Perhaps the steady and low-key existence of e-commerce livestreaming will raise more waves in the end.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110