Twitter today announced the launch of Twitter Shops, a new shopping service that will allow merchants to build a collection of up to 50 products to promote on their Twitter profile. The free mobile-first tool attempts to move customers from discussing things on Twitter to actually clicking through to peruse the merchant’s inventory and then checking out.
Unlike Instagram’s native Shops, however, these transactions do not occur on Twitter. Rather than that, consumers must first click the “View Shop” button located above the merchant’s tweets to access the merchant’s shop. When the consumer is ready to purchase, they will simply click on the item to be routed to the merchant’s website to complete the transaction. This experience occurs through an in-app browser, much as TikTok’s new shopping functionality.
The function is free to use, and according to our sources, Twitter is not actively monetizing the new product while it is in testing.
Twitter Shops builds on the company’s recent e-commerce endeavours.
Twitter launched an e-commerce test in the United States last summer, allowing users to browse products via a “Shop Module” at the top of the merchant’s profile. However, this module only allows visitors to navigate through up to five products. The new Twitter Shops have a broader catalogue that merchants may submit via a CSV file.
The file can contain up to 10,000 goods, each with its own name, description, price, and other information, allowing the merchant to quickly rotate the 50 products featured on their profile over time.
Along with the Shop Modules, Twitter began testing a new livestream shopping platform with Walmart as its first beta tester in November. Twitter reports that Walmart received more than 2 million views during the livestreamed event, but does not specify how many of those views resulted in conversions. Live Shopping has recently expanded to include additional managed partners, such as food delivery service Gopuff and Samsung.
The new Twitter Shops, as well as the Shop Module and Live Shopping functionality, are contained within Twitter’s Shopping Manager, a single point of entry for merchants to configure and manage accessible shopping capabilities. According to the firm, this Shopping Manager is now available to Twitter’s managed partners.
