Twitter has long been experimenting with e-commerce features – and this has culminated in its just-announced roll out of a “buy now” button. This will allow any US retailer with their own Twitter page to directly sell products or services through tweets.
The social media site is already making this new setup easier for retailers by integrating with the leading e-commerce platforms Shopify, Demandware and Bigcommerce. This move is intended to prove lucrative, as many of the transactions made through tweets will see a cut go to Twitter.
“We think of Twitter as the world’s largest direct-to-consumer channel,” the site’s Vice President of Commerce, Nathan Hubbard, has been quoted by CNBC as saying. Noting the already huge demand for Twitter-based shopping, he declared: “The next big thing in mobile is ‘buy’ buttons. We’re just at the beginning of transactional mobile commerce.”
Hubbard also predicted that apps could soon generate billions of dollars for the online retail sector – observing that, as a result of tweets tagged with “buy now” buttons, “consumers will be able to buy in the apps where they spend the most time”.