Businesses Of All Sizes
Can Try Out The Twitter Buy Button
By: Chris Crum | Staff Writer
A lot more businesses are about to have access to the
"Buy Now" option on Twitter, potentially ramping up
opportunities to makes sales directly from tweets.
Is a Twitter buy button something that you're
interested in using or at least experimenting with? Let
us know in the comments.
Twitter has been dabbling in ecommerce for a fairly
long time at this point, but has yet to offer a
widespread way that any business can set up a buy button
for selling items directly from tweets. Sure, they've
made announcements about such features, but only a
select few have really gotten to take advantage.
While the functionality isn't going to be immediately
available to all, the company finally announced a much
bigger push that will greatly expand it to businesses of
all sizes. The company is integrating Buy Now with
Bigcommerce, Demandware, and Shopify to enable new
businesses to sell through Twitter. The partnerships are
powered by the recently announced Stripe Relay.
Stripe announced earlier this month that it partnered
with Twitter and other companies to offer an API for
stores to publish their products and enabling apps to
read them. Relay seeks to make it easier for developers
to build mobile ecommerce experiences and for stores to
utilize them. Store provide product info to Stripe via
its dashboard, API or by linking their existing
ecommerce system.
"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," said Nathan Hubbard, Twitter's VP of Commerce.
"With Buy Now, businesses can drive more conversions and
remove much of the friction in the mobile purchasing
process. Today, as we begin rolling out to a wider group
of platforms and partners, people will have even more
opportunities to discover and purchase products from the
brands they love on Twitter."
"Over the last year, we've built commerce solutions
that connect customers and brands like never before,"
Hubbard adds. "This includes making it possible to buy
products right from a Tweet, load offers directly to a
credit or debit card, and browse or shop collections of
products without leaving Twitter. As we continue to
develop new products and expand the ecosystem of
platforms and partners in the social commerce space, we
can help even more brands and customers connect on
social and mobile."
Bigcommerce merchants can choose to include Buy Now on
regular and promoted tweets, and when a customer
purchases via Twitter for the first time, their payment
and shipping info is saved so they can buy and confirm
with two clicks for future purchases. Orders made on
Twitter go to the Bigcommerce control panel for standard
order processing.
"Twitter's Buy Now allows brands to offer in-the-moment
purchasing experiences for repeat and net new customers
without leaving the Twitter platform," says
Bigcommerce's Tracey Wallace in a blog
post. "For retailers, this increases product
discoverability, offers improved ROI for social media
efforts and increases brand awareness among Twitter's
316 million monthly active users."
"Up to this point, most brands have been unable to
serve immediate click-to-purchase opportunities to those
customers without forcing them to redirect to another
site," Wallace adds. "Now, Bigcommerce merchants can
collapse the purchasing funnel, offering in-the-moment
buying experiences right when and where potential
customers are considering them."
Demandware's enterprise customers can install and
configure the Buy Now cartridge within their
implementation. Merchants can share a Buy Now enabled
product link through either an organic or promoted
tweet, and when the user clicks, they'll get additional
product info and begin the transaction. The order is
sent to the Demandware Commerce Cloud for inventory
verification, order calculation, placement, etc. When a
product is enabled for purchase, users can retweet the
buyable URL.
"This is an incredibly exciting time in the retail
industry, and one of profound change," says Demandware's
Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Elana
Anderson. "The surge in mobile commerce, new
transactional platforms, alternative payment types,
shared economy applications and innovations in
fulfillment are just some of the things providing
retailers with opportunities to grow their business. The
result of these many advancements is that the consumer
has gained more control over her own destiny including
discovering new passions and products in places.(like
Twitter) not directly controlled by the retailer. This
democratization effect is disruptive but represents
enormous upside for retailers who embrace it to become
what our CEO Tom Ebling calls 'connected brands.'
I believe Twitter has its nitch and I am going to try to use it.
More to come
Joe
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