When I was as old as some of you are now… my mother – in the interests of educating her naïve, yet scintillating progeny – advised me never to place all my eggs in one basket. Well, the years rolled by, my grasp of metaphorical allusions improved and I assimilated the essence of this idiom into my very bosom.
I’d never had reason to question this nugget of maternal wisdom, but last week my world was thrown into turmoil by the revelation that Amazon and Twitter had just launched an integrated hashtag functionality that lets you place all your eggs and anything else you crave into your Amazon shopping basket, without having to navigate away from the micro-blogging leviathan.
This mutually beneficial partnership is a sensible and straightforward way to boost sales, enhance customer experience and simplify the purchasing process in one fell swoop…
…as well as providing a tangible and transparent measure of genuine Social ROI. The potential for other applications to remote control their site via hashtags could mean that this innovation is just the tip of the iceberg for social media marketers the world over.
Amazon have rich pedigree in online retail and up until now have always been fairly reluctant to get involved in social media initiatives, but as entrepreneurial users of social sites are becoming more skilled in creating viable social shopping offerings, they have had to bite the social bullet in order not to be left floundering and losing revenue to an array of upstarts and start-ups. Even though the hook-up with Twitter has been touted as an exciting enhancement to Amazon’s customer service experience, I’m sure there’s more than an element of nipping any threats to their dominance, firmly in the bud.
Using the immediacy of the social engine to power direct sales and lubricate the purchase funnel as this promises to, the perennial questions about demonstrable ROI and the power of social commerce will hopefully be easier to answer as direct insights into sales conversions versus social data will be plain to see.
From a user experience perspective, #AmazonBasket (#AmazonCart in the U.S.) means that seasoned social media users don’t have to tear their eyes or index fingers away from their Twitter feed…
…nor inconvenience themselves with a lot of time-consuming clicking to initiate their purchase, which can only mean a smoother and less convoluted user experience. It’s unfortunate that the purchase still has to be completed via the Amazon site and slightly takes away the initial frisson of excitement, but as this is the first iteration of the technology, improvements and streamlining will inevitably follow: The current tagline for the new service, ‘Add it now, Buy it later’, would certainly turn more heads if it simply said “Buy it now!” and the impulse buy could be completed in a single social media bound.
If this functionality could be applied to direct payment systems, customer engagement surveys, petitions for change and other vote-based projects, the potential for Twitter to become an even more influential conduit for social change than it already is a certainty: Instant charitable donations, helping to affect democratic change and deciding the fate of young pop wannabes could all be a hashtag away if organisations develop these opportunities in the right way.
In the same way that the exploitation of mobile interactivity is now a tried and tested blend of big revenues and social warmth, there is a rich seam of entrepreneurial gold waiting to be plundered from the adoption of similar Twitter integrations: Whether it’s re-ordering a previous takeaway with #myfavouritemeal, or reserving tickets for a show with #bookmyseats, the potential for clever people like you to get on-board the hashtag gravy train are endless.
Tempero on Google+
