Twitter’s looking to help users ensure that they never miss out on an exclusive product launch – and help businesses connect with interested shoppers – via a new ‘Product Drops’ reminder option, which merchants can add to their tweet listings.
Introducing Product Drops, a new feature that helps shoppers stay on top of your latest launches. Check it out???? pic.twitter.com/X0YDqtE3YA
As explained by Twitter:
“People come to Twitter to talk about products and product drops every day. And merchants have long been dropping products on Twitter without any native product support. We’re excited to change that and introduce new shopping features that empower shoppers to stay on top of the launches that matter most to them and provide merchants with another way to engage shoppers around big product moments.”
As you can see in the above example, soon, merchants will be able to add a ‘Remind Me’ button to their tweets about upcoming launches, which will provide more product information, and a way to get updated on the release.
“When you click on the merchant’s Tweet, you’ll open the Product Details Page – a full-screen space where you can see all the information you need to make informed and confident purchase decisions. This includes the price, pictures, a description of the product, and a clickable hashtag that will show you what other shoppers on Twitter are saying about the product.”
From there, you can tap to add a reminder, and Twitter will then send you an in-app notification in 15 minutes before the time of the launch, helping to ensure that you’re among the first to shop for the item.
Users will also be able to make a purchase from the same notification. Tapping through on the final drop alert will guide users to a “Shop on website” button, where they’ll be able to purchase the item as soon as it goes live.
It could be a good way to drive purchase activity in the app, with the real-time nature of Twitter adding to the FOMO factor, and likely prompting more impulse purchases as a result.
Though I can also see NFT traders jumping on this, as a means to boost excitement about their projects. It’s not clear, at this stage, whether NFTs can be listed as products to be displayed in this way, but if they can, you can expect to see various ‘Remind Me’ buttons attached to cartoon images in the app.
It’s the latest in Twitter’s evolving shopping tools, which also includes new product links within tweets, updated, interactive product showcase ads (in development) and product display modules on Professional Profiles.
As with every other social platform, the potential of adding in-stream shopping is too valuable to ignore, and with users already tweeting about products and the latest brand updates, it makes sense for Twitter to lean into this where it can, in an effort to drive more shopping engagement.
But it’ll be fairly limited to begin with.
The new reminder button will initially only be made available to users in the US who use Twitter in English on iOS devices. Twitter’s testing Product Drops with a select set of partners, including Dior, Fossil, Home Depot, and LEGO, among others.
It’ll be interesting to see where Twitter goes with its in-app shopping tools, especially as Elon Musk takes over (or not), and this may well be the most interesting of its shopping options that it’s officially previewed thus far.
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