Contentos Looks to Enter a New Industry — Live Stream E-Commerce!
Dear COSers,
We are very pleased to announce that Contentos will be exploring the field of live stream e-commerce, and the very first step of this journey is a much anticipated partnership between Contentos and Origin Protocol.
In 2016, when I was the person in charge of the operation of an international live stream platform, I tried the celebrity e-commerce live stream function in the United States. At that time, the LiveMe team provided customized services for the personal e-commerce brands of live streaming celebrities with fan bases, in addition to ad sharing and live stream rewards. Internet celebrities would sell a variety of their personal branded products, from T-shirts, mugs, steaks and even Spa discount coupons, and could upload iTunes links to promote their music creations. Many LiveMe creators operated their own store as a sign of popularity.
We spent the first half of 2020 researching about the live stream e-commerce industry and identified several pain points:
1. Live stream e-commerce requires training.
To facilitate live stream e-commerce and sponsored infomercials, sellers need to have an understanding of the current market atmosphere and trends, which require extensive training. Having a popular streamer will help with the view counts, but that does not necessarily convert into e-commerce sales.
A good live stream e-commerce session is usually more ideal with two people — a popular internet celebrity and a partner responsible for promoting sales, responding to users and providing immediate feedback. In addition, the streaming platform’s real-time notifications on the number of simultaneous viewers and the number of potential buyers will better let the streamer know when the “big move” should be pushed to complete the sales.
2. Buying experience of the live streams needs improvement.
The gifting of rewards is a huge component during a live stream and they are usually completed without leaving the live stream interface, or even fully integrated into the viewing experience. However, more often than not, the e-commerce live stream will be interrupted when users want to browse more product details while watching the live stream, and in turn potentially losing out on these opportunities for gifts. In product design, “live stream e-commerce” needs to optimize the product query and buying experience.
3. Payment and receipt is an issue.
China’s mature Alipay / WeChat payment has solved the most important last-mile problem for merchants and live stream platforms, but this remains an unresolved issue in many other parts of the world. LiveMe used to connect to the e-commerce platform SDKs such as Shopify and Amazon, but the user experience was still not good enough when completing several important levels of payment and entering delivery addresses. For example: you must first log in to Amazon’s account password and enter a 16-digit credit card number, and these additional actions may decrease the purchase desire and lose the buyers. This also leads to the fact that although 15% -20% of the viewers click to initiate the purchase process from the live stream room, the percentage of users who complete purchases is only 0.3%.
The area where we are most interested to invest in is the application of blockchain technology to overcome the difficulty of payments and creating ad revenue for e-commerce live streams.
COS tokens are used in COS.TV to purchase Gifting Votes, which is used to reward video creators and purchase emojis. This demonstrates COS token’s value in completing payments within the ecosystem, and this payment method is not subject to the various restrictions and fees of the traditional banks, credit card system, or Apple / Google Play In-App-Purchase, providing transparency to the actual profits generated. This can maximize the revenue of e-commerce merchants and potentially give back more to consumers. Of course, privacy protection considerations will be made when replacing traditional payment with COS tokens, ensuring that users can purchase goods with peace of mind.
All user groups watching e-commerce live streams also passively accept advertisements. Regardless of whether a sale is made, the audience are left with an impression of the product.
If this viewing record is transparently recorded on-chain, merchants will be able to better manage their effective leads. This is the biggest advantage that the Contentos blockchain can provide, uniquely differentiating itself from centralized content platforms. Naturally, e-commerce live advertising will be a future extension of the COS.TV profit-sharing advertising model.
The partnership between Contentos and Origin Protocol is the first step in this direction. Soon, we will start collaborating and integrating with more well-known e-commerce related projects to explore the infinite possibilities of global live stream e-commerce.
Your Sincerely,
Mick, Co-founder of Contentos
2020/5/29
