Live shopping
A live sales broadcast where viewers watch a host, open pinned products, chat, and buy without leaving the stream.
See it
What it is
Live shopping is a sales broadcast where a host demonstrates products and viewers can open tagged items or buy while the stream is still running. It borrows the pitch-and-demo rhythm of QVC, then adds chat, reactions, limited stock, and a product tray to the video player. Taobao Live helped make the format ordinary at enormous scale in China.
Reach for it when the product benefits from demonstration, comparison, or questions answered in the moment: cosmetics, clothing, tools, food, and collectibles fit naturally. A run of show should map each segment to a catalog variant so the producer can pin the right item as the host moves through the lineup.
Gotcha: the video and commerce clocks can disagree. A viewer joining late, watching with latency, or replaying later may see a pin for stock that is gone or a price that expired. Revalidate price and availability when the product sheet opens and again at checkout.
Ask AI for it
Build a live shopping page around Mux Live Streams and HLS playback. Show the video, viewer count, moderated chat, and a product tray backed by real catalog variant IDs. Give the producer a control panel to pin and unpin products during the broadcast, persist each cue with a stream timestamp, and send cue changes to viewers over Server-Sent Events. When a pin arrives, animate a compact product card over the player with title, image, current price, stock status, and Add to Cart. Revalidate the variant on the server before adding it, preserve the cue timeline for replay, and show an expired or sold-out state instead of replaying a stale offer.