There has been a great deal of talk over the past year about the potential of social media buy buttons to drive more online sales, but for the most part, it would seem, it’s still just potential.
We’re more than halfway through Cyber Monday, and it looks as though buy buttons from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest have all had minimal impact.
A report from Re/code says that one of Pinterest’s big launch partners for Buyable Pins has been seeing less than 10 purchases a day with the feature. Jason Del Rey reports:
The company says more than 10,000 merchants have joined the program, including big retailers and brands like Macy’s, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Cole Haan and Tory Burch, but at least one of these big partners is seeing fewer than 10 purchases a day on Pinterest, according to a person with direct knowledge of the sales figures. This source and another also said that Pinterest insiders have privately admitted to being disappointed with early sales numbers.
A Pinterest spokesman declined to comment on this information, but said the company is encouraged by at least one bright spot. “Although it’s still early days with the program, we are hearing from merchants that many of their customers coming through Buyable Pins are new and we are driving higher mobile conversions,” he said in an email.
Pinterest reportedly told the publication that it’s still early days for Buyable Pins, and that it plans to learn from this holiday season to make improvements.
While Pinterest doesn’t have the reach that Facebook does, it would seemingly cater more to the purchasing of merchandise based simply on the nature of the service. If Buyable Pins ends up not working, it could say a lot about the future of the social media buy button.
Last month, Pinterest announced the addition of new platform integrations and the availability of the feature to many more merchants.
Image via Pinterest