TikTok Lives - 2 ways to sell

Merchants doing tiktok lives can direct their viewers to buy in 1 of 2 ways:

(1) Yellow shopping cart

The first (and more convenient) is a yellow shopping cart in the lower left corner:

Clicking on it loads a menu of products being showcased in the live:

And clicking on the "Buy" button takes the viewer to its Tiktok product detail page:

At that point, clicking on "View on Website" takes the viewer to the Shopify Product Detail Page where they can do their ATC -> Checkout sequence.

(2) Link in bio method

In this 2nd method, the live seller tells (or shows) their viewers to click on their profile pic in the upper left corner:

Clicking on it loads a modal showing their Tiktok stats:

And then clicking the profile pic again loads the bio which has a link to their store:

Some merchants have a linktree or linkpop here. Others link straight to their Shopify store or to a specific collection in their Shopify store that they're showcasing in their Tiktok Live.

Some Shopify stores will open within the Tiktok browser. Others open in a new browser, which has the disadvantage of getting a warning page that you're leaving Tiktok to go to an external website. (how does Tiktok decide what loads within its own browser?)

Number of taps to checkout

With the yellow cart method, the viewer has 5 taps to get to checkout:
1) Tap yellow cart in lower left corner to load the modal of products
2) Tap "Buy" button to go to Tiktok PDP (product detail page)
3) Tap "View on Website" to go to Shopify PDP
4) Tap add-to-cart or Buy it Now

With the link-in-bio method, the shopper has to go through 5 taps to get to checkout:
1) Tap Profile picture in top left corner
2) Tap Profile picture in modal
3) Tap Shopify URL
4) Tap on product to go to Shopify PDP
5) Tap add-to-cart or Buy it Now

Staying in the live

Besides being one less tap for the shopper to go through, the yellow shopping cart has the big advantage of keeping the viewer in the live. The viewer doesn't need to exit the live to go to the website, find the product, and add-to-cart.