Real-Time LIVE Commerce Experience
Hipi is an Indian short-video UGC platform where users create and consume entertainment content. While Shop the Look improved contextual commerce, users continued to drop off when switching apps during influencer-driven discovery moments. Hipi LIVE was introduced as an in-app live commerce system enabling influencers to stream, tag products in real time, and pin them as Now Showing with Wishlist and Buy CTAs. The objective was to eliminate context switching, increase session depth, and unlock a new revenue stream for Hipi, influencers, and partner brands.
6-9 Months
Lead Product Designer
Product
Business
Engineering
Brand Partnerships
Finance
Revenue Model
Affiliate Commission
Brand Promotion Fees
Influencer share
Tools
Figma
Miro
Maze
Mixpanel
The Problem
Users were consuming short videos passively. There was no mechanism for live, authentic brand interaction. Retention post-video was low and discovery of shoppable products was incidental.
The Goal
Design a live-streaming feature where influencers can showcase and tag products in real time, allowing viewers to wishlist or purchase without leaving the app boosting retention and revenue.
+4mins
Avg. Live Session Time
+41%
Wishlist Saves
B2B
New Revenue Stream
UX Process
Research & Analysis:
To understand how Hipi viewers experience content and commerce together, we conducted in-depth interviews and observational sessions with 12 users across Tier 1 and Tier 2 Indian cities Mysore, Mumbai, Coimbatore, Indore, and Lucknow. The research focused on live viewing behaviour, product discovery patterns, and where the buying journey breaks down.
Most users followed 10-20 fashion and lifestyle creators and described Hipi as the platform where they "just watch" not where they buy.
Product discovery happened naturally during live sessions, but purchases were almost always abandoned once users had to leave the app to find and buy the item.
Live content created real purchase intent in the moment, but the platform had no mechanism to capture it no product pin, no save, no in-session CTA.
The research made one thing clear: the problem wasn't user motivation. Viewers wanted to buy. The gap was entirely in the experience the moment of intent existed, but the product never gave them a fast, frictionless way to act on it before the live moved on.
Pain Points:
App-switching kills the moment. Users had to exit Hipi to find and buy. By then, the impulse was gone.
No way to save mid-stream. No wishlist during a live meant missed products were lost forever.
Discount codes didn't stick. Verbal promo codes with no on-screen persistence were forgotten or mistyped.
Commerce was invisible. No product pin or buy signal. Intent existed but there was nowhere to act on it.
User Personas Summary:
Our 10 users were women aged 19 to 28 from Tier 1 and 2 cities, mostly students or early professionals. They watched fashion and lifestyle content daily across Hipi, Reels, and YouTube Shorts and shopped on Meesho and Myntra. None had bought directly through Hipi. Trust in influencers was high but trust in the buying process was not. The gap was never motivation, it was always friction.
User Journey Summary:
Users entered lives through followed creators and engaged with content before products caught their attention. Intent spiked when influencers physically showed a product or mentioned a code. They consistently did not search for products after a live ended, did not return once they left the app, and disengaged the moment a product placement interrupted their viewing. The window of intent is narrow and breaks the second the viewing state does.
Wireframes & A/B Testing
Product Experience Walkthrough
Usability Analysis & Product Impact
Usability Analysis:
Usability testing ran alongside A/B experiments during Hipi LIVE. The Now Showing card included Buy Now and Wishlist, but the two-step Buy Now flow caused a 61% drop-off because users were taken out of the live stream. We introduced a subtle overlay to improve CTA visibility and shifted focus to a one-tap Wishlist option, allowing users to save products without leaving the session, which reduced abandonment. Persisting and auto-applying the discount code at checkout further improved completion rates by 48% compared to only displaying it on the card.
Product Impact:
Hipi LIVE Shopping created a net-new revenue stream through brand partnerships and affiliate commissions, moving monetisation beyond advertising. Users who engaged with the Now Showing card stayed in-session 2.4x longer on average. Creators gained a native affiliate tool, reducing dependency on external workarounds. For brands, wishlist data offered first-party purchase intent signals that traditional influencer campaigns never provided. The feature shifted Hipi from a passive content platform to an active commerce layer.