Not Using Twitter Shops? Here’s Why You’re Missing Out

E-commerce accelerated through the pandemic, and consumers are increasingly expecting to purchase products on platforms they already use. The established digital commerce leaders, such as Google Shopping, Amazon.com, and Etsy, have seen substantial usage increases since the onset of the pandemic, which is emblematic of the broader digital storefront trend.

Historically, retailers have had a meager 280 characters from which to spread promotions or highlight newly released products. With Twitter Shops, these endeavors have a visual stage from which the presence of a product within a user’s Twitter feed can entice and excite. This new offering builds on top of the broader visual search trend that has woven itself into the thread of the modern internet, where retailers have capitalized on the adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” For a platform that has relegated users to just a few hundred characters, this is disproportionately impactful to Twitter.

Today, social commerce is on the upswing and is poised to become a new means of product discovery for customers and a new entry point for retailers. If you’re a retailer and not exploring new opportunities like Twitter Shops as potential digital storefronts, you need to consider them soon.

Enhance Your First-Party Data Collection Strategies

Twitter Shops facilitates product discovery, but because purchases still take place on retailers’ websites, it adds to their existing first-party data collection strategies. Retailers don’t have to give up control of their purchase funnels to Twitter, and gain the benefits of discovery and engagement on the front end. This is a win-win for retailers that are already using Twitter and an enticing proposition for those that aren’t.

Using Twitter Shops as an entry point to a retailer site offers the capability to perform additional types of data analysis to better predict and inform how customers ultimately purchase. For example, it can be used as a signal to inform new or existing propensity to purchase or lifetime value modeling, alongside the current array from other sources such as Google Shopping or other aggregators.

Maker-Customer Connection

According to data compiled by eMarketer, 41 percent of U.S. adults used social commerce features in 2021, and 46 percent indicated that they plan to use more in 2022. Retailers can utilize this increased social commerce intent to help connect them to new customers by illuminating top-selling products. What makes Twitter Shops appealing to a variety of retailers is that the product curation aspect requires minimal lift.

Unlike other e-commerce platforms, Twitter Shops only displays a maximum of 50 products at a time, though it can support upwards of 10,000 products. This allows retailers to get creative when selecting which products from their main feed to promote — top sellers, trending or on-sale products, to name a few — but likely there are others as well. Savvy makers and brands may utilize a more data-driven approach, where they identify top-selling products from customers who visit their site via Twitter.

Setting Up Shop

Many brands today that are already using an e-commerce platform to curate a product feed could find that a transition to utilizing Twitter Shops might be more seamless than they think. Conversely, those that have yet to promote their products now have a low-barrier entry point for testing, where the 50-product max might seem less daunting. In both scenarios, the winner is ultimately the retailer, as Twitter Shops encourages both existing and up-and-coming retailers to now take another look at the social platform, not just for customer engagement but also for sales.

Twitter isn’t upcharging for using Twitter Shops at this stage, allowing early adopters that find success using Shops to capitalize on the novelty of Twitter-derived discovery and gain a competitive edge. That reason alone makes Twitter Shops a compelling complement to existing digital strategies that retailers shouldn’t miss out on.

Jeff Stuart is product engagement manager for Adswerve Search, a Google Marketing and Cloud partner that is a team of media and analytics veterans who believe smart marketing is built on data discovery.