Bertold Harmath, Co-Founder and CCO, Livebuy: One of our customers, actually our first customer Douglas in Germany, and they are Europe's number one beauty retailer. The Chief Digital Officer was at a conference talking about the impact that video and live shopping had inside the Douglas store and shared that they see conversion rates improved by 50 percent and they see that users are spending more, that users are coming back to the online shop more frequently. I think that's very plausible, especially when we look at something like this app feed that makes the app more sticky.
Lamia Chlala: We're so excited today to be chatting with Bertold from Livebuy. Livebuy builds live and on-demand shoppable video experiences for some of the biggest brands in Europe. Bertold is going to share with us some great insider tips about building video into your e-commerce experiences, including how they built their own TikTok-like feed of shoppable content. Let's get into it.
Bertold: The way we came together with Douglas was when their brick and mortar stores closed down, they wanted to keep this premium experience for their customers and offer them more than just a text and image based webshop. So they put a YouTube player into their website and put like a couple of products below that. And when I saw that I called Douglas, I knew somebody there, and said like, "Hey, great what you're doing. I think we can help you make it better. Truth be told, we didn't have a product at that point, but it was more about convincing them that there is a vision we hit it off right away. When I showed the Douglas people, our idea and like the first initial screenshots. And then I did a demo at home, painting my face with Douglas products. And they were sitting on the other end of the experience, adding the products to their cart.
Once we had the demo working. They loved it and now that we've done our job and we've developed a system that is similarly simple to embed like a YouTube video. It's a bit more complex, admittedly, because you have to connect the add to cart to the video and things like that, but it's not rocket science by any means. That gives the online shop more options to implement content into their page. And yeah, that's fundamentally our mission. Make that as simple as possible and help the online shop differentiate themselves, make shopping fun inside their own experience.
Lamia: Maybe tell us a little bit, maybe you can show us, you are, you are the Chief Demo Officer. So can you show us a little bit of how does Livebuy work for your customers? What is, what does that look like? We'd love to see what you're building there.
Bertold: Yeah, sure. Happy to do that. So what you see here is Douglas in Germany, they have more than a billion euros in revenue just from their online stores, a couple of hundred brick and mortar stores throughout Germany. And one thing that we discovered customers or a typical buyer journey usually starts outside the online shop. So they might see an Instagram ad or something in a movie that they like. And then they started searching for that in a search engine. And eventually at some point, if the online shop has done their job, right, the potential buyer ideally finds his or her way into the online shop, right? Sometimes people think that the homepage kind of like as the starting point to an online shops, but that's not the case. Usually the journey begins directly on the product detail page.
So now we're on the product page and Douglas is doing their best to give a lot of information about this product. Of course, you have many different images. You have a product description, but let's be honest, how many people really read the product description? Usually they're more optimized for a search engines that they're for humans. So nobody really reads that. And so it's difficult for somebody who is curious about the product to make the purchase decision right now.
And we can see that in the data too, right? There is this usually two to three percent conversion rate that online shops usually have. Which means that 97 to 98 percent of visitors inside the online shop don't purchase something when they're there, but they leave. And where do they leave? Usually they go to YouTube or to TikTok or to Instagram to get some more information about the products or even to Amazon because Amazon still has the most reviews, user-generated reviews inside their store, just to get another opinion, to get validation, to get social proof. And all these things are what's typically lacking in an online store. And we thought with video, we can fix that.
So with video, and this is what we did here on the Douglas page, we are integrating videos that contain exactly that product that the user is looking at on the product detail page. And if a user wants to get more information, see the product in use on some different skin tones, you can swipe from from video to video. You can have the product and edit to your card immediately. So like the different variant, that's what you need. There is also sort of a cross-sell/upsell effect because I can not just see a product, but actually see the product used together with other products to create a certain look. And then I can visit the cart immediately here. Or if I close the video, I see a little accident and that reminds me that I have products in my cart. And when I click on that, as you can see, the products are now added to my cart and I can simply add them or check them out and purchase them in the store.
We are integrated at various points throughout the online shop. What I just showed you was our product detail page integration. Douglas is also using us on kind of like a landing page for the users that are interested mostly in the videos. So it's a little bit like Douglas's own Netflix, if you want where you can see the live streams that are announced. You see all the various clips here, categorized in different categories. You see the recordings of past live streams, even international superstars like Billie Eilish have been live on Douglas to present her new fragrance collection. Yeah, so we are integrated in, in many different parts. And as you might see there's various different creators that are attached to those individual videos. Creators get their own kind of profiles inside the Douglas online store. It's very very similar to Amazon storefronts, if you're familiar with that, where the creators have their little page where you can see all the content from one specific creator and the live streams that are happening in the future, you can follow the creator and that way never miss when they upload new content. Some of the creators even feature their Douglas storefronts in on their Instagram profiles or on their TikTok profiles. And that way engage their audience that is outside of the online store and lead them into the online store to make those purchases.
We knew from the beginning that in order to make this successful, it's not enough just to give online shops the ability to put videos into their site. The difficulties in this come from scaling the content platform. If the online shop were to produce all the content by themselves, that would be impossible. Creators are much better at doing this. So from the beginning, we built our software in a way that the online shop becomes a content platform. It's curated, it's controlled. The online shop at all stages can make sure to only allow the content that they want on their platform, but they can democratize the content creation and leverage all the different kinds of creators that they are partnering with, whether it's their own employees or whether it's international superstars, influencer, and even their own customers. Douglas has started a program where they allow their own customers to apply to become a Douglas creator. And then once they are verified and Douglas gives them the rights to upload content, they can publish clips on how they use products to help other people make better purchase decisions.
Lamia: So this is a great desktop experience. How is this also translated into the mobile world where there's competing apps like TikTok and Instagram and social social media platforms? How are, are your brands that you're working with able to, to create capitalize on mobile experiences as well?
Bertold: Great question. So what Douglas has done together with us and I'm showing the mobile app view now in addition to the regular mobile app experience where you have the banners and the advertisements and the products here, they have introduced a button here at the very top of their app that says "clips." And when you click that. A TikTok-esque experience opens up that allows users to discover products in a new, interactive, engaging way. As you can see there is more content here. So once I start swiping I can enter this new kind of experience and be inspired by products and find the right products for me.
So the way Mux comes into play with our software is literally in the background, because we have the video player that plays a video and then on top of that, we put our software with the product selection and in live streams, you can chat and swipe to the next video and we display the player or the the widgets inside the product detail pages depending on which product the user is on. So that's coming from us. But as soon as the player is open, the video running in the background comes from Mux. And that's very convenient for us because building a video streaming software or like the infrastructure behind that is not our core competency. We're good at the e-commerce stuff. We are good at connecting the e-commerce with the video. And Partnering with Mux allows us to focus on exactly that and make sure that we do our job well and Mux does their job well and together, this is a great solution for online shops.
Lamia: In using Mux, you're obviously using our on-demand video, but can you tell us a little bit about the live infrastructure, how you're using live and, and how that works with interactivity?
Bertold: Yeah, sure. So when it comes to live, we are using Mux's low latency streaming capabilities to make sure that there is as little latency between the broadcast of the video and the user receiving the video as possible. Multidirectional communication is a big part of the live events, and when you ask a question and you get the answer five minutes later, that doesn't work. So the lower the latency, the better for the whole experience. Kudos to Mux for low latency streaming.
Lamia: You obviously you're in, you're based in Europe and you work with a lot of European brands, but you were telling us you and your co founders have been watching trends regionally, right? Especially in China and in the implementation of video in shopping experiences. What are some of the trends that you're seeing in the e-commerce landscape? Regional trends? Global trends? How are, how are some of the things that you're seeing coming to life today in 2024?
Bertold: Yeah. So I mean live shopping especially, even today is still huge in China. There was this video that went viral recently of a seller that was showing products like for three seconds, and then the next product, and then the next product, and it works fabulously over there. I don't know if something like that would work in Germany or in Europe or in the US. I'd be curious to see. So if there are online shops that would like to try something like that, hit us up. We can help you with the software and then you can experiment with that. But we do see some cultural differences. As mentioned before, live shopping is what we started with, but we discovered that there is kind of a glass ceiling because the live show makes most sense live. And it's very, very difficult to get people into the same kind of experience at a certain point in time. So you have to kind of offer them something special, like a special discount or something. That's how it works mostly in China, in the Western world. And I'm generalizing a lot, obviously there is like nuances to this, but having this freedom to decide when you want to consume content and what to watch plays a huge role. So this asynchronous clips oriented experience that we've now built seems to be fitting better to what users expect and want from an online shop. That's, that's my answer.
Lamia: And that in, I think we, we mentioned that a little bit before, but that seems to be in line with what we're seeing with social media trends, right? TikTok and Instagram both stepping a little bit away from their live shopping experiences into more of that creator based click through on clips. It's nice though, that when an e-commerce brand themselves are building out their own experiences and aren't relying on what social media has to offer, they can integrate both. Right. So we're seeing that with Douglas, right? They're integrating both that live shopping and those clips into, into one experience, which is
Bertold: That's a very good point that you're raising because I think that's very important for online shops to do that. At the end of the day, people like to spend time and experiences that they enjoy and Instagram and TikTok deliver those experience, some might say even to a fault online shops, relying on social media and being present there. I mean, they should be present there, of course, that's where people spend their time. Online shops relying too much on social media and even going so far as to sell over social media, what TikTok and Instagram are experimenting with, Facebook as well, does come with a risk because for the typical user, for the typical customer, it will not be clear that they are actually purchasing something from a specific shop. They will feel like they purchased something on TikTok or on Facebook. And the online shop goes into the background and takes kind of like the second row in the whole transaction. Losing the direct access to their own customers and becoming kind of like a fulfillment service for social media. And eventually this could lead to the online shops losing power and social media becoming more and more powerful. And I believe that cannot be in the strategic interest of online shops. They have to protect their access to their own customers.
So, approaching this from the other end and introducing content inside their own experience, making sure that the customer has everything they need to make the purchase decision inside the store, will help them and also will build this community and increase loyalty of their customers to their own stores. Again, not saying don't do social media. That would be a mistake. But be mindful that if you rely on social media too much, it could backfire.
Lamia: That's some really great insight there knowing where does outline happen and, and not just sitting back and allowing external forces like social media to drive your engagement and audience, but engaging in both and which is important. Let's say I am a brand new e-commerce brand. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to - or just an existing e commerce brand, but I'm ready to start dabbling into video and start getting my feet wet with video experiences. Outside of calling Livebuy and saying, "Bertold, hey, help us out!" which is a great thing to do. But what kind of video would you recommend as a first start for and where in their world should they first start implementing video?
Bertold: Yeah, great question. So if I had an online shop and this is very important I want to also be transparent about this It doesn't it probably doesn't make sense to implement shoppable videos in online shops if you don't have the traffic already. So if you are just starting out on Shopify and you don't have traffic yet, you should focus first on getting the traffic into your store. But once you have that traffic and you want to optimize your conversion rate, you want to make sure that all the marketing dollars that you spend are as effective as possible. You should think about how can you improve the experience to help the potential buyer make that purchase decision. And that's where video comes into play.
So if I were to start with video and I'm already an established retailer then I would start on my product detail pages, create videos. I can use if I have an omni channel business. So if I also have brick and mortar stores, I can use that. I can ask my employees for help. Usually I have the product expertise in-house already because that's what my offline employees do when they help customers in the stores as well and you would be surprised. Sometimes when customers start with us they ask themselves themselves the same question like how will I produce the content? And actually that is one of the bottlenecks. The software is just the vehicle for the content. And they are surprised by how many creative and like really, really good creators they have in their own ranks that now have an opportunity to live out that kind of expertise and provide more value to their customers digitally. And then when I have, when I organically kind of grow my pool of creators and I have this constant influx of new content, that's when I can think about implementing something like this app feed that I showed before into my mobile app. To increase the stickiness of my app to make sure that users have a reason to come back again and again and again. So that's probably how I'd do it.
Lamia: That's awesome advice for anyone who's thinking about video and, and approaching that in, in their in their plans and content plans and infrastructure plans. That's awesome. If you were to put on magical goggles, thinking ahead, looking ahead to what's coming up in e-commerce from your conversations, what do you see coming up on the horizon? What's coming up on the horizon for Livebuy? How do you see worlds integrating and technology evolving?
Bertold: So as mentioned before our software is a vehicle for content and content and producing content is a big bottleneck. And I was personally very, very excited when I saw the advancements in generative AI, especially the recent announcement from OpenAI with Sora and there's probably also other platforms that are experimenting with generative video. We have started looking into how we can use generative AI capabilities to create content without the human need. Now, this doesn't mean that we want to replace human content. In fact, I'm a very big proponent of human content. And I think having this experience of similar people, same body shapes, same skin complexions, things like that will be very, very helpful and very important in online shops to help make purchase decisions. But there is also some like. generic information about products that can be found on the product detail page, but we've already established that nobody reads that stuff anyway. And if you can package that in a more engaging format in a short 10 to 15 second clip, that gives you the most important information about a product or how it compares to other products that are similar to that one, just based on the product data. I think this could be a very, very exciting format again to supplement the human content creation and make sure that not just the highlight products get a video, but also the less loved products get some sort of video that helps users have a better experience inside the online store. So that's what we're looking at. And we're very excited about the whole development in AI and what's coming out of San Francisco, especially and out of the rest of the world. And yeah, very excited about that.
Lamia: Yeah. I'm glad you said supplement and not replace. Cause I think that in everything you're saying, there's authenticity, right to the experiences you're creating and helping enabling these brands to create. And so pairing that authentic experience with informational experiences is also, it's, it's a good pairing of the two. This is fantastic. Thank you so much Bertold for spending time with us, for lending your expertise in e-commerce and, and everything that you've learned, putting your Chief Demo Officer experience to work as well, and showing us, showing us Livebuy in action. We really appreciate the time that you spent today.
Bertold: Thank you so much for having me. It was great fun. Thanks.
