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5 Minutes

Twitter as an eCommerce Platform & the shift towards conversational commerce

Twitter might be the next eCommerce platform for merchants to intensify their social commerce strategies for as it has been confirmed it’s testing a new way to display tweets that link out to e-commerce product pages — like products on a Shopify store, for example. The company is experimenting with tweets that include a big “Shop” button and integrate product details directly into the tweet itself, including the product name, shop name, and product pricing.

Why Twitter Introducing eCommerce Features?

  • The number of US social commerce buyers accelerated 25.2% to 80.1 million in 2020 and will grow another 12.9% to 90.4 million in 2021. 
  • Twitter is a unique engagement platform
  • the shift towards “conversational commerce" and the increasing importance of the D2C relationship
  • The next step for twitter from a payments perspective
Social Commerce buyers in the US 2021
Growth of social commerce in the US. Soruce: Emarketer.com

Twitter Tests E-commerce Features

A new Twitter card is being tested for tweets that include a big “Shop” button and integrate product details directly into the tweet itself, including the product name, shop name and product pricing. Twitter confirmed to the tweet is an example of a new treatment for “organic” tweets focused on e-commerce.


Social Commerce Trends

Twitter is intensifying its platform usability for Social commerce, which is the process of selling products directly on social media. Bruce Falck, Twitter’s Revenue lead said

“We’re starting to explore ways to better support commerce on Twitter” 

And rightfully so, in 2020, partially due to the pandemic, the US social commerce buyers hit an all time high and the growth trajectory will definitely continue, as there is an abundance of data that supports this.

The "Elon Musk" Effect

It is an understatement that Tweets can have a profound impact, and whilst the example I’m about to give is an extreme one, it certainly sketches a picture of how people listen - and act.

With more than 47 million followers on Twitter, Elon Musk’s tweets get a fair amount of attention and His tweets move markets. When he changed his Twitter bio in late January to #bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin rose nearly 20% in a matter of hours.
And the power of Musk was not a one-time wonder, there’s a lot more spikes, just because of one person’s twitter account.

Conversational Commerce & D2C Relationship

Before I paint the picture that a single tweet with the new ecom feature is going to spike your sales revenue with 20%, it is not.

However, I truly do see Twitter as having the potential to become a driver of sales for merchants due to the fact that Conversational factor. 

“We know people come to Twitter to interact with brands and discuss their favorite products, This demand gives us confidence in the power of combining real-time conversation with an engaged and intentional audience” 

Conversational commerce refers to the trend of interacting with businesses, get customer support, ask questions, get personalised recommendations, read reviews and click to purchase all from within Twitter.

There are five distinct steps in the customer purchase journey:
  1. Need recognition (Awareness)
  2. Search for information (Research)
  3. Evaluation of alternatives (Consideration)
  4. Purchasing decision (Conversion)
  5. Post-purchase evaluation (Re-purchase)
The customer purchase journey


If companies, truly focus on the conversational aspect, and recognise the power it potentially has on Twitter, they can own the customer purchase journey.

By engaging in trending feeds or tweets, they can create a level of relate-ability for potential customers, provide information on why they should buy their product,  build brand personality and way more all on the platform and organically.

Compared to all other platforms, Twitter head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to conversational aspect, and relatability for users.

The next step for twitter from a payments perspective

For now the features, are merely an on-platform eCommerce feature, but taking all the above mentioned information into consideration, what would elevate social commerce to the next level? 

From our “payments perspective”, we’d say, pursue that true frictionless experience, having partially achieved the customer purchase journey on platform, integrate on platform order & one click payments.

What do you think of this E-commerce features of Twitter? And how do you think Payments can play a part in transitioning to a fully frictionless social commerce experience?

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