Twitter Focuses On Retargeting And Ditches Recently Launched Buy Button

Did you hear about all the hype around the Twitter Buy button? And then did you hear that, less than a year after launching it, they’ve decided to drop it? See? It’s not just the smaller businesses like yours and mine that have to do embarrassing U-turns sometimes. When the research tells you something isn’t working, you’re wise to listen and act.

Social media is vital for targeting customers, but it turns out that certain platforms are more useful that others for certain steps in the purchasing funnel. With the new Buy button, it was hoped that Twitter could be joining the seasoned ranks of Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest in setting out its stall in the marketplace. However, setting up the click to purchase facility was always quite an involved process, and let’s face it, that’s not what Twitter is about. Twitter is a place for low commitment clicking and moving on with life.  People don’t come to Twitter looking to make a purchase.

It’s a bit like this: You’re going for a gentle amble in the countryside, and you suddenly get accosted by a double glazing salesman. You weren’t really in the mood for spending at that moment, and you didn’t have your credit card number on you either, so it just becomes an irritating distraction. Seems like that’s how the Buy button in Twitter has been received.

But let’s not assume this means Twitter is no longer useful for eCommerce. Don’t start deleting your Twitter business profile just yet. The company has stated that they plan to orient the Buy button investment towards advertising, redirecting to other eCommerce opportunities, but just not offering an actual checkout facility itself.

Your Magento UK business can be part of benefiting from Twitter’s research findings by using your tweets to redirect customers on Twitter to relevant features on other platforms where they might actually be more in the natural mind-set to go on to buy.

But another take away from this story is like we said at the outside. It’s always good to be able to change your mind in business. There’s no shame in realising that the direction you were going in needs to change.