Twitter Introduces a New ‘Buy Now’ Button (and for Good Reason)

Twitter business users will be happy to note that the social media site has a new ‘Buy Now’ button that allows users to make purchases directly through the Twitter site with a single click.

And the timing of this new introduction couldn’t have been better for Twitter. According to GlobalWebIndex, it seems that 75% of 16-64 year olds on Twitter are actively purchasing online, compared to 67% of all Internet users.

(Source: GlobalWebIndex)

According to Twitter’s official announcement in a blog post, ‘Buy Now’ buttons will appear at the bottom right of tweets coming into users’ news feeds. Twitter is partnering with an online payment service called Stripe to process transactions. This Twitter release comes two months after Facebook’s testing of its own ‘Buy’ button. Nathan Hubbard, the former Ticketmaster CEO who joined Twitter as head of its commerce division noted, Twitter will have two advantages over other social media sites going the “ecommerce” route: One is that Twitter is a site that focuses on following influencers and two, Twitter is in the business as being the only true real-time social media site. The real-time aspect of Twitter will hopefully create sense of urgency for spontaneous purchases and limited-time offers.

(Source: Twitter)

The new button is Twitter’s biggest step toward ecommerce after months and months of testing. Earlier this year in May, Twitter had played around with ecommerce by letting users add products to their Amazon shopping carts by adding #AmazonCart at the end of tweets.

Right now, the ‘Buy Now’ button is being tested and rolled out to a select group of users before being fully introduced. According to Mashable, those select brands include Burberry, The Home Depot and artists like Ryan Adams and Megadeth.

With this rollout, Twitter says it’s hoping to make the advertising returns and conversion rates easier to measure and grasp on the social media site. Hubbard stressed that improving ROI for marketers and to boost revenue through transactions are both goals of the commerce strategy.