Creating a brand means more than selling good products; it means telling your story and keeping people interested in you. Having a blog that relates to your products is one thing but having products that relate to your blog is another. Buy buttons are a way to help integrate some different faces of the Internet and are a great way for people who already tell stories online to find new market opportunities without being intrusive or repellent to their audiences through unwanted sales pitches. They are also a great way for someone with a good product to expand their content into other forms such as blogs and art.
BUY BUTTONS: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Buy buttons are a clickable button that can be placed on any website you own (or even an email) that allows your viewers to buy something at that time and there without leaving the site. They are connected to your Shopify store, so you can put as many or as few items from your inventory as you want. Your readers can safely check right on the screen and are usually used to highlight one target product at a time rather than having your customer browse through your entire store.
WHO IS IT FOR?
Buy buttons are ideal for people who already have an online presence and are already generating traffic somewhere. For example, anyone who has a website hosted on WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, Wix, etc. and already has readers. Or, for example, making speeches, fairs, festivals and presentations of books or products. Collecting donations, selling merchandise, tickets or anything else becomes a natural part of your website without directing people to a third party site.
EXISTING SHOPIFY MERCHANTS CAN LOG IN DIRECTLY
If you don’t have a storytelling or branding platform yet, but you do have a Shopify online store, Buy Buttons are an easy way to reach potential new partners. If you find bloggers or websites that attract people in your market, you can suggest selling directly on their websites with the Buy button, greatly expanding your reach and reducing your marketing and public relations resources.
The Buy Button is what many bloggers, writers, artists and other creators are looking for. If you’re not ready to start a full online business but see the opportunity to sell one or two products as part of your current hustle and bustle, Buy Buttons are a great first step. You can integrate them directly with any online platform or blog you’re already using and try things out to see if you can expand into a full online business.
FIT WITH SITE AESTHETICS
The goal of Buy Buttons is to integrate with your website. A Buy Button is fully customizable in terms of font, size, shape, etc., as well as the embedded shopping cart. Buy Buttons are integrated into computers, tablets and phones.
KEEP USING SHOPIFY ADMIN
The advantage of the Buy Button is that, while greatly facilitating online traffic to your store, it still has the same easy Shopify Admin features. Keep your sales reports, data analysis and normal business tools in one place while your store is open all over the Web.
WHERE IS IT PLACED?
Buy Buttons can go basically anywhere on a website. It is quite common for them to be
- On a sidebar
- Directly on a destination page
- In the content of the click itself, as a photo of the product you are promoting.
- Even on default error pages
THE SDK
The Buy Button from Shopify is available for all Shopify sales channel plans. However, if you’re looking for more custom features, you’ll need a developer and Shopify Plus.
Shopify has released a JavaScript Software Development Kit called Shopify Buy which is available here. The SDK is intended for developers and allows you to customize features such as color quantities or options, generate a payment URL, and much more. You can use the SDK to choose the product you want to use with the Buy Buttons, where it will go on your site, what the customer sees, and how the checkout process works.
