in the eye of the perfect storm.

“eyezon was founded 3 years ago by a group of friends – professionals from sales, digital commerce, inbound and outbound marketing and, of course, software development –  in the midst of the perfect storm.”

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Already in 2017 it was very clear to us that during this decade digital marketplaces and social media will start rapidly converging into a completely new format of digital social commerce. Today marketplaces are increasingly turning into social shopping platforms, quickly adapting social media instruments and embedding them into their customer experience. Social media, reaching their advertising monetization limit and being pressured by their shareholders, are entering the retail game by redefining themselves as all new virtual megamalls. We’ve already reached the point where accessibility, abundance, and affordability alone, taken to unpreceded levels by leading digital commerce platforms, are simply not enough in the highly competitive online retail game. Social commerce, with the more natural, engaging and culturally meaningful instruments of connecting people and businesses, placing live and abundant content at the center of this connection, is now officially seen as the key transformation tool for the next decade of retail growth.

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“Brands and independent retailers are losing the race for more motivated traffic to current digital marketplaces and future social media commerce while their purchase conversion rates become increasingly dependent on data & technologies, in both of which, digital marketplaces and social media exceed independent retail by a wide margin.”

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With the steady decline of brick & mortar sales volumes and profit margin, and fast growth of sales volumes in online channels, retail globally invests 9 out of 10 dollars into traffic and customer acquisition, while only 1 dollar is put into purchase and repurchase conversion instruments. Of course, if you are a digital marketplace or a social media platform growing into a new social commerce platform, this seems to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as traffic (and not a product or a service) is essentially what you sell. But if you are a large brand or independent omnichannel retailer with own online channel that has a purchase conversion average of 2.5% versus 20-25% in your brick & mortar stores, investing most of your money into pumping up the traffic, free shipping and promotional discounts – is the most certain way to hand over your business to the guys we have just mentioned, who actually own 100% of online customer traffic and engagement instruments.

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“The key problem of the whole digital retail transformation story is that, eventually, when you look at your shop website, app, marketplace or social media page – you and your customers are drowning in the vast “sea of sameness”. Terrible lack of space for creation of a differentiating, unique competitive brand advantage”.

Brands and independent retailers are losing the race for more motivated traffic to current digital marketplaces and future social media commerce while their purchase conversion rates become increasingly dependent on data & technologies, in both of which, digital marketplaces and social media exceed independent retail by a wide margin. Attracting customers as quickly as possible, by demonstrating as relevant a choice as possible, to sell them a product for the lowest price possible. Ideal customer experience that IT guys believe in, to be blunt about it, is turning all of the internet’s social, entertainment and shopping space into endless rows of supersmart hi-tech “virtual vending machines”. And turning manufacturers, brands and retailers into vending machines suppliers and maintenance staff.

The key problem of the whole digital retail transformation story is that, eventually, when you look at your shop website, app, marketplace or social media page – you and your customers are drowning in the vast “sea of sameness”. Terrible lack of space for creation of a differentiating, unique competitive brand advantage. And this is “the perfect storm”. The perfect moment for thoroughly reimagining the customer journey, and making new uncompromising decisions about how you want to keep, grow and engage your customers in this decade. And, as historically was always the case, one of the most powerful instruments to reboot your brand and sales has been right under our noses for quite some time - live streaming. Fresh, real-time, rich and engaging interaction between businesses and customers, skyrocketing as The Most Talked About Thing during the last year, due to a well-known reason that you are already sick of hearing about.

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We at eyezon believe that we have a lot to say to you about it, while totally not repeating the things that you’ve most probably heard and will hear A LOT about from your digital partners, marketing and media advertising agencies, or Digital marketplaces. We want to share with you our own experience of a startup product becoming the fastest growing independent SaaS business in commercial live streaming, in just over 6 months, in one of the toughest retail markets in the world. In 2020 our Livestream Commerce solution has covered 1/3 part of the Eurasian continental area with a population of more than 200 million. We did it by partnering with top omnichannel retailers in over 10 categories, with a total web traffic of more than 58 million. Together we have reached more than 25 million impressions and more than 1 000 000 engagements, which converts into 112 000 of live dialogues with salesmen which resulted in about 10 000 sales, with a conversion rate of over 20%. M o n t h l y. And we want to share our thoughts on what our unfair advantage in doing it was exactly, and how it may help you make more informed and wise decisions during this year’s big hunt for getting your business into this game. So stay tuned.