Twitter Starts Live Test of New Profile Shops In-App Product Display

Twitter, like any other social platform, is steadily improving its strategies towards eCommerce and the incorporation of product listings within the app. A Shop module for Professional accounts, along with product displays in individual tweets, have already been tested.

Nevertheless, Twitter brings it further, launching a live test of 'Twitter Shops' with a limited group of businesses chosen to take part in it.

Users can press on the large 'View Shop' CTA button on business profiles to browse all of the products that a business has presented for purchase via the app, as shown in these photos.

According to Twitter:

“With Twitter Shops, merchants can handpick a collection of up to 50 products to showcase to shoppers on Twitter. The feature, which is free to use, gives people the chance to view products from the profiles of their favorite brands, so when you talk about and discover products on the timeline, you can now browse them on Twitter, too.”

The ability to exhibit 50 products is a marked improvement here; with the Shop Module, brands are restricted to presenting only five products. Brands will now have far more freedom to share their offers on the app, with users being sent to the merchant's website to shop when they tap on a Twitter Shop item.

As previously mentioned, Twitter has been experimenting with many variations along with related ideas in recent months, and it trialed a nearly identical concept in 2015 with its 'Product and Place Collections,' which allowed some users to market products in a designated profile section.

It never took off in the past, but perhaps now is social commerce's best chance and for Twitter to profit where it can, by giving more alternatives for businesses and more immediate access to merchandise for users.

The overall idea is to provide brands additional chances, and if Twitter could become an important promotional partner for more businesses, their activity in the app will certainly increase, allowing Twitter to expand its revenue offers and open up more use cases.

But it's unclear whether customers want to buy things using the app. Perhaps from individual tweets, but would people go to profiles to look for products?

Even if this is a big routine shift, Twitter must continue to try new things if it hopes to gain 100 million new users by 2023.

I'm not sure it's a realistic objective for the company, given that it only attracted 18 million users in 2021. However, this emphasizes the need for innovation, and it stands to reason to include extended product listings as it attempts to provide more professional and commercial tools to accommodate a wider range of usage alternatives.

It'll be fascinating to see how people react to the test, especially if it ends up rolling out to many users.

Twitter Shops is now available to selected merchants and managed partners in the US. Businesses that have their Shops enabled today include @Verizon, @ArdenCove, @LatinxInPower, and @GayPrideApp, all viewable to US users on iOS.