What’s the newest feature that Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter all have in common?
Hint. It’s not the star icon that recently changed into a heart. It’s the button that commandeers—or rather, lightly suggests—that it’s time to make a purchasing decision.
Each of these social media networks added the “buy” button with the idea that browsers can be convinced to become buyers. But the push for social media platforms to become thoroughfares for e-commerce comes with clear challenges.
A year after Facebook and Twitter placed the buy button within ads on their sites, they’re still in the experimental phase. Pinterest has the most promising story of social media turned e-commerce, but all three have seen sluggish growth.
Part of the reason is it’s unclear what priority these platforms have placed on purchasing. Under Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, partnerships have formed with software companies such as Bigcommerce and Stripe to bring more merchants into its ad spaces. But the thing about Twitter is that those buy buttons could easily get lost in a sea of retweets and video spoofs on Adele’s new hit “Hello.”
Facebook explored buy buttons by placing them on ads and letting people purchase products without leaving the site. The social media giant’s idea is still in the beta stage and only online merchants who work with Shopify, an e-commerce software provider, are able to take advantage of the buy button. Some business pages on Facebook also have the buy button, but this feature isn’t widely available to all users in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Pinterest has created a Pinterest Shop where anyone can find curated trend collections by Pinterest that are for sale. With this strategy in place, there’s potential to grow advertiser reach by as much as 30 percent.
At the end of the day, selling ads are the top priority for retailers, and the buy buttons are a nice add-on that still hasn’t worked as well as sellers had hoped.