We thought: What if we could help people shop places usually only accessible by foot? So, we created PayPal's Local Selects - a livestream shopping experience where customers are virtually transported to the world's coolest markets to discover and buy unique items in real time. Through our livestream and custom Local Selects microsite, we took viewers around the world from LA and NYC to Sydney.

With style expert Leandra Medine of famous Man Repeller blog and comedian Matt Okine leading the way, shoppers could discover new products and merchants in a fun way. As an item was held up, the Local Selects site displayed the product details and purchase options in real time so online shoppers could instantly buy items they loved. The Local Selects livestream gave online shoppers access to unique products they may have otherwise never known existed - all with seamless checkout with PayPal at the end.

Local Selects LA took place in June while Local Selects NY and Australia took place in December for the holidays. While viewers can still shop the microsite today, the Facebook and microsite livestream were only implemented for three hours on selected days in order to shop with our hosts in real time. Our flexible tool accommodated pre- and post-event tailored content, layout and functionality. As the host held up an item during the livestream, our site displayed the product details and purchase options in real time. For the mobile site, we incorporated the livestream video into every page, so it would remain visible even when the user navigated to another page. While this type of in-page video on mobile is common in native apps, we were uniquely able to translate that functionality to a mobile web platform. Local Selects gained traffic around the world, proving its global reach.

Local Selects exceeded our initial objectives and goals, yielding 250,000+ transactions, 590,000 livestreams and over 21,000 PayPal sign-ups. With such a high number of transactions and sign-ups, we were able to validate Local Selects' ability to drive PayPal purchases and reflect a PayPal win at checkout. Our featured merchants also saw incredible success and spikes in transactions, with one even getting a 31% spike in PayPal transactions as compared to a usual day. Lastly, and most unexpectedly, Local Selects also yielded a spike in PayPal merchant sign-ups. This showed us an opportunity to also use Local Selects as a tool for onboarding new PayPal merchants and a great way to spotlight up-and-coming small merchants.

Overall, Local Selects was both a business and creative success by giving PayPal a repeatable and scalable way to successfully connect modern online shoppers with small merchants across the globe.