Twitter launches beta shopping experience for merchants

Social media site Twitter has continued to make moves in implementing shopping experiences into its offering, launching a new feature that hopes to better support businesses.

Twitter Shops, which is currently in its beta experiment phase, will allow merchants to curate a selection of 50 products to showcase to shoppers and display them through a ‘View Shop’ button on their profile.

The free-to-use feature enables users to browse items through an in-app site and make direct purchases through a link to the merchant’s online store.

In comparison to the social media platform’s Shop Module, Twitter Shops gives merchants the opportunity to show a larger catalogue of products, part of the company’s efforts to provide better support for businesses.

Currently, the feature is only available to select merchants and managed partners in the US and through its iPhone app.

As it proceeds through the testing phase, however, Twitter plans to look into making stores more discoverable, with ideas on adding ways to tell brand stories, expanding product numbers and bringing the new feature to a wider audience.

Its goal is to build upon product discussions already happening through its site, providing shoppers with a point of action “where a conversation can become a purchase”, the company said in the announcement.