From TV shopping to e-commerce live broadcast, what makes the "variance of goods delivery"

When you stare at your mobile phone, wait for the anchor's "come, link" password, and then kill lipstick, mask, bag or electronic products with one click; compare with your parents who guard the TV and call and buy at the host's impassioned urging Watches, belts, jewelry and health leather shoes-what is the difference between the two?

Enthusiastic sellers, an atmosphere of overwhelming appeal, and the price stimulation of “there is no such shop after this village”, and finally gained a passion after placing an order and thanking him for having missed the buyer again.

The current e-commerce live broadcast has perfectly reproduced the popular TV shopping model more than 20 years ago on the core elements, inflammatory speech, a sense of atmosphere, and a precise grasp of consumers' fluke psychology and herd psychology.

The difference is that the person who placed the order has become a "you" who grew up in the Internet era and whose needs must be responded to in a timely manner.

Therefore, strong interaction with consumers has become the biggest difference between e-commerce live broadcast and TV shopping. Modern live broadcast technology allows anchors to interact with consumers in real time, and perform on-the-spot performance after sensing consumer feedback. The interaction in the live comment area is also easier for consumers to produce a "herd effect", and then follow the trend of consumption.

This article will fully share the e-commerce live broadcast scene, and decrypt the operating mode and technical support behind a live broadcast.

Live e-commerce industry map

According to data from the Ali Research Institute, the scale of China's live e-commerce transactions is expected to reach 199.5 billion yuan in 2021. E-commerce live broadcasts are so popular that the number of live broadcast viewers of a leading anchor reaches tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, which is normal.

Who are the participants in the live e-commerce industry? According to the live e-commerce industry map compiled by iResearch, it can be roughly divided into:

Supply side: MCU institutions, Internet celebrities and other anchors, brand vendors, etc.

Platform side: e-commerce platform, content platform, social platform, etc.

Consumer side: C-end users

Other business support: live broadcast system services, e-commerce operation services, etc.

(The picture comes from iResearch)

E-commerce live broadcast operation mode

In the live broadcast e-commerce industry chain, the live broadcast platform is the "front office" that gathers all forces and displays various technologies, and is also an important medium for consumers to perceive this model.

The live broadcast platform must meet the needs of different roles such as merchants, anchors, and audiences through rich functions. For example, warm-up pictures and videos, custom advertisements, function customization and other functions that empower the brand.

The live broadcast of the head host will also require support for high-definition bit rate and 4K ultra-high-definition resolution image quality, so that product display during the live broadcast can meet the needs of consumers for an immersive shopping experience. The chat room barrage, question and answer, rewards, live answering questions, lucky draw gifts and other functions are to increase the activity of the live broadcast room.

In addition, businesses also need to obtain quantifiable live broadcast effects, interpret consumer behavior in an all-round way through data analysis, and provide data reference for subsequent optimization.

As Internet traffic becomes more and more expensive, the operation of stock fans has gradually become the main means for businesses to increase revenue, mainly focusing on the relationship between consumers and anchors, and pursuing to provide consumers with an accompanying shopping experience. In the live broadcast, the host uses a variety of ways to get closer to the fans, chatting and interaction become the focus, followed by selling products.

The strong interaction mode of the live broadcast room relies heavily on targeted solutions created by communication cloud service providers represented by Rongyun, and requires the integrated use of IM instant messaging, WebRTC, live CDN and other technologies.

So, in a live broadcast, how are these technologies organically combined?

equipment

Under normal circumstances, small and medium-sized anchors will prepare two mobile phones, one for live broadcasting, and the other for monitoring live broadcasts and performing auxiliary actions such as product listings.

If the host has high requirements for sound effects, he will also use the sound card to adjust the sound quality to make his voice sound more magnetic and fuller.

In addition, more professional anchors will use PC + professional cameras as their live streaming equipment. This needs to cooperate with the desktop version of the push tool provided by the e-commerce platform or use the free OBS push software. After debugging, the high-spec video images collected by the HD camera can be pushed to consumers.

Video distribution

The pictures collected by the device generally need to be released through push streaming software.

Usually, the released video stream follows the RTMP protocol. When the host needs to connect to the microphone in real time, or PK with other hosts to bring goods, the host needs to switch to the RTC protocol.

The host and Lianmaizhe or two PK hosts will have a real-time conversation in a virtual room in a network, and use video merging and bypass streaming technology to push the virtual room's screen to the CDN for real-time distribution of the live screen.

At present, Rongyun will also choose to directly push the video stream of the RTC protocol to reduce the bad experience such as stuttering and black screen caused by the host side switching protocol.

Video Confluence

Video merging technology not only ensures that the audience can see the two anchors in real time, but also ensures that the video images of the two anchors and their voices are kept in sync.

More importantly, the audience only needs to pull one stream. This greatly reduces the occupancy of the audience's network bandwidth, and watching a high-definition live broadcast only occupies 1 to 2 Mbps of bandwidth.

Otherwise, subscribing to the videos of the anchors in the two PKs at the same time will double the bandwidth usage, and insufficient bandwidth will cause bad experiences such as screen stuck.

In response to this situation, the Rongyun audio and video service architecture meets e-commerce live broadcasts in multiple scenarios such as single anchor and multi-anchor PK. Developers can freely choose low-latency links or traditional CDN live links.

(Rongyun audio and video service architecture)

e-commerce live broadcast solution

Rongyun has been deeply involved in the field of communication cloud for many years, with IM instant messaging and RTC real-time audio and video capabilities as the core, and strives to create IM+RTC+X "full" communication solutions. For the e-commerce live broadcast scene, Rongyun also launched a full-stack live broadcast solution to fully empower developers.

(Rongyun provides a full-stack live broadcast solution)

The cloud-integrated chat room solution built on the basis of IM capabilities allows developers to flexibly use the message types in the message library without complicated business combing; it has powerful concurrent message processing capabilities, and it can reach millions of messages concurrently. , To meet the communication needs of various live broadcast scenes, and make real-time interaction more stable and smooth.

Based on RTC real-time audio and video technology, Rongyun's low-latency live broadcast solution has high definition and strong real-time transmission of live audio and video; audio can resist 80% packet loss, video can resist 40% packet loss, and the delay from the host to the audience is less than 350ms; Supports recording and playback and custom video. The host can play product advertisements in the live broadcast room; supports multi-anchor audio and video merging and push to the audience, reducing the power consumption of the client and achieving the ultimate live viewing experience.

(Support a variety of useful functions such as custom video)

In the e-commerce live broadcast solution, Rongyun also provides developers with various communication peripheral capabilities, including content review, voice messages, dynamic expressions, merge and forwarding, microphone position management, microphone interaction, barrage, gifts and other functions. The packaging allows developers to quickly build live products with strong interactive capabilities by simply checking and configuring, and easily solve operational problems in the "post-live broadcast era".