Talk Market and the Online Video Shopping Experience
A few unusual video shopping efforts have recently popped up that create a different kind of video shopping experience. Although not necessarily the paradigm for the future, they show with some originality how moving pictures can go beyond simple product presentation and in the best case, help drive networking between sellers and buyers.
In common is their platform approach. Niche and specialty retailers are gathered together on a common video shopping platform.
An "interesting" start is The Talk Market, which the New York Times E-Commerce Report introduced in detail last March ("A D.I.Y. Approach to Making a Web Commercial"). In the best case informative but in general in a long winded kind of way, sellers present themselves and their products with video on the platform. As with YouTube, the videos can be bound to your own website.
Shopflick recently launched with a slightly different approach. Techcrunch gave a pretty detailed report on this site while it was still in private beta. On Shopflick, sellers can not only publicize individual product videos (as with Talk Market), but it also allows for individualized shops to be set up complete with video teasers.
The most unusual approach is from ShangBy, also covered by Techcrunch. ShangBy, like the others, is a showcase for small shops. But here there’s a real feeling of live shopping. Not only is ShangBy-TV delivered as a livefeed, but individual dealers can also produce shows at regular time slots to introduce new products and then directly be available for Q&A.
Its worthwhile to ask why its even necessary to have special video sales platforms when classic platforms such as YouTube (for recorded video) or Justin.tv (for livestreams) provide similar solutions which can also be easily integrated into shops and shopping sites.
Sometimes it's the fans who find new ways to create a different kind of video shopping experience - like the daily Woot-TV ("Every night, quarter-to-Woot"). The latter example also shows where almost all video platforms fall too short at the moment – coming up with original ideas for shows that are fun to watch.
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, translated by Jason Soo.
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