Why Social Media Buy Buttons keep Failing

We’re sure you’ve seen it before: Little buttons on Facebook posts, tweets, and Pinterest photos with the word “Buy” on it. These are buy buttons, and social media sites have been trying them out as a way to get into e-commerce. But these social media buy buttons haven’t really been working out so well. There’s been plenty of hype surrounding them, but they aren’t turning social media users into consumers yet. We’ll take a look into why social media buy buttons keep failing.

Why aren’t social media buy buttons working?

One theory as to why social media buy buttons don’t work is that consumers are used to shopping other ways. Pinterest users will “heart” and “pin” products all of the time — but they won’t click buy. This could be because many social media users browse on their phones, but make e-commerce purchases on their computers. Or it could be because social media buy buttons don’t list a price. There are a number of factors, but overall, customer behavior is the main reason why social media buy buttons aren’t making sales.

Buying stuff on social media doesn’t interest users

According to a poll done by research company GlobalWebIndex, only 14 percent of social media users were interested in Instagram buy buttons and 13 percent were interested in Pinterest buy buttons. The fact is that consumers like to find products on both of these sites, but they don’t want to purchase on them. There are plenty of other ways companies can use Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook to boost sales; buy buttons aren’t one of them.

But just because social media buy buttons haven’t taken off yet, doesn’t mean they’re not going to. It may be too early to tell the future for buy buttons; rest assured, social media websites aren’t going to give up quickly.