It’s a buyer’s market for Twitter Buy Now buttons.
Twitter announced a big rollout of its e-commerce effort today, partnering with Bigcommerce, Demandware and Shopify in integrations that will greatly increase the number of merchants who can sell directly within user timelines.
Twitter has been testing its Buy button for more than a year, tinkering with ways to entice people to make purchases directly from tweets. Facebook is also testing an in-feed buy button and Pinterest rolled out Buyable Pins in June.
Now Twitter is hitting the accelerator. Bigcommerce and Shopify each have in the neighborhood of 100,000 merchant clients in the US and Demandware has hundreds (which tend to be larger retail brands). Twitter’s Buy button is currently only available for businesses selling in the US.
Of course, not all merchants will want the feature and it remains to be seen whether people will embrace the idea and practice of buying within social networks. But Twitter is betting that they will.
Nathan Hubbard, Twitter’s head of commerce, explained the company’s thinking in a blog post:
The goal for all our commerce initiatives on Twitter is simple: make it as easy as possible for businesses to connect directly with, and sell to, customers on Twitter. With Buy Now, businesses can drive more conversions and remove much of the friction in the mobile purchasing process.
Twitter also said it’s giving Buy button access to Adidas and PacSun. And any business that lists its products on Stripe’s Relay API also can include buy buttons in tweets.
You can read more about Twitter’s Buy Now button on this new information page.
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