Amazon ups the shopping ante via Twitter

Amazon has found another way to bring shopping to the increasingly mobile U.S. consumers. In recent days, the retail giant announced that consumers now will be able to shop on Amazon via their Twitter accounts.

Brecken Branstrator brecken.branstrator@nationaljeweler.com

Not that a person who already makes 75 percent of her purchases online needs any more of a reason to shop, but I was very intrigued by this news when I first saw it.

Here’s the idea: You see an Amazon link to a product on Twitter, and if you want it, you reply to the Tweet with the hashtag “#AmazonCart.” Provided it’s available, the product immediately is added to your Amazon shopping cart.

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With one Tweet and a response from Amazon, I was good to go.[/caption]

You even will get a Tweet back to confirm as well as an email.

The one problem: You have to link your Amazon account to your Twitter account, so if you have a private account the Twitter account that responds to #AmazonCart won’t be able to see the Tweet and it won’t work.

The idea is, obviously, to make it easier for Twitter users to shop Amazon on their phones. I think it’s a great idea and it is one more thing, on top of Sunday delivery added to more markets, the e-tailer is doing to stay ahead of its competition.

I wanted to test it out for the sake of this blog so I gave it a try Monday, linking my Amazon account with my Twitter profile.

Because I didn’t immediately find many Amazon links in my own Newsfeed, I went over to see what Amazon’s Twitter profile could offer me and picked the most interesting thing I could find, a cookie dipper. (For those who don’t know, including Editor-in-Chief Michelle Graff, a cookie dipper is a spoon-like utensil that hooks around a cookie so it can be dipped in milk.)

With one simple Tweet and one quick reply, I knew that it had been added to my cart. I popped over to my account online and--voila!---there it was. I did not actually buy the cookie dipper as it was for experiment’s sake and I just couldn’t justify that to myself, but I thought that the whole transaction was easy enough.

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Added to my cart with ease[/caption]

A recent article on Forbes criticized the cart for failing to provide consumers with immediate gratification because they’re just adding the item to a cart, not actually buying it, which I think is a great point. But I also see the value in adding

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something to a cart while you’re thinking about it so that you don’t lose it, even if you have to come back later and actually buy it.

A lot of Millennials are following their favorite brands on Twitter, and there’s something to be said for being able to take action when something is recommended. And maybe for everyone’s bank accounts, especially my own, it’s best that it doesn’t actually buy it right away.

I would be interested in seeing what the conversion rate is of people who add the products via #AmazonCart and actually end up buying once the service has been around long enough to analyze the numbers.

The Forbes writer also brings up the point that only a limited amount of product information can be provided in 140 characters. But here’s where the lack of immediacy proves to be a strong point: You can add an item and come back later to look at it, read more about it, read the reviews and then make your decision. And assuming that you’re reading from a trusted source in your Twitter feed, you’re probably not blindly making the decision.

Now the question remains: With more and more platforms like #AmazonCart being launched to compel consumers to an even faster, easier shopping experience, streamlined to meet them in their space, how can retailers afford not to focus on their mobile presence and even e-commerce?

Let me know what you think about this new program, and in the meantime, I’ll be shopping deals on Twitter.

Brecken Branstratoris the senior editor, gemstones at National Jeweler, covering sourcing, pricing and other developments in the colored stone sector.