Twitter announced on Wednesday it was testing a new feature that allows users to shop and buy products within the app window. The feature, called the shop module, offers a special area at the top of the profile where companies can list their products in a carousel. The shopping area offers a merry-go-round of products that can be purchased without leaving the platform.
The store module is Twitter’s latest investment in commercial capabilities, an area the company says it is exploring. It is also the most exploratory yet for Twitter as it enters the crowded e-commerce market of social media.
Twitter’s new shop module is a separate area at the top of the profile, where companies can present their products. When a user visits a profile, the Shop module allows them to scroll through the company’s product carousel and tap on one of the products to find out more. The shop module appears as a product image in the carousel on a Twitter profile of the brand.
Twitter said it will not process the purchase or payment until the user buys the product on its merchant page.
With the broad growth of e-commerce, social platforms are increasingly looking at how they can integrate shopping elements to keep users on the platform longer and maximize revenue opportunities. Executives at the company took a swipe at Twitter’s Analyst Day earlier this year, mentioning future research into trading functions. In March, Twitter conducted a survey of users on the platform and asked for feedback on potential business features that could feed into its professional profiles.
Sales and product manager Bruce Falck reminded the public that it was not the platforms’ first foray into purchasing. Twitter plunged in 2015 into Twitter shopping with a buy button on product pages and collections, writes Falck on Wednesday on the company blog. This was the prelude to the “shop module,” which “will allow us to explore purchasable profiles and create a way to talk about products on Twitter and discover them and buy from these profiles,” explained Falck.
Visitors can present product carousels, find out about them and buy directly from the app without having to leave Twitter. Twitter has added a slew of new features to the recent past such as tickets, disk space, subscriptions and more. The majority of these features are designed to help creators on the platform generate more revenue.
Twitter recently announced it was getting rid of its fleet of Follow Live runs, which began last August. Two weeks after announcing the fleet’s sunset, Twitter Live, Instagram Stories and the like, Twitter is throwing its proverbial hat into the ring of social commerce. Twitter is also adding and testing a number of new features, including iOS beta apps that can be added to Apple I / O.
The company told TechCrunch that companies with professional profiles can use the feature for some time. Through their partnership, we hope to meet the needs of companies of all sizes and verticals with our product innovations. The new Merchant Advisory Board will consist of brands that have created themselves on Twitter as the best examples of merchants best-in-class.