What Does the Google Buy Button Mean for Your E-Commerce Business?
It takes a lot to run a successful e-commerce business these days,and there are plenty of resources to help you when it comes to looking for strong business advice. But with all of this advice, comes more obstacles, like how to convert customers.
If you want customers, then you need Google’s help; Google essentially controls what traffic goes to which site. So when Google changes how it operates, it puts a lot of strain on businesses in order to comply. The Google "buy button" is next up in the queue of things changing, and e-commerce store owners are worried it will impact their businesses.
Why Are E-Commerce Stores Worried About the Google Buy Button?
The fear for e-commerce business owners is that Google will be more than a search engine, instead becoming a reseller or middleman. This obviously robs e-commerce stores of important relationships with their customers. The fear is that this will lead to an Amazon-style situation, where customers often believe that they are doing business with Amazon as opposed to third-party sellers, and any customer service and returns processing will be handled without the control of the e-commerce store operator.
How Will the Buy Button Affect My E-Commerce Store?
The simple answer is that it’s hard to know. There are rumblings and rumors flying around that suggest that this will be disastrous for small businesses—after all, Google is a massive conglomerate that would probably love to do multi-billion dollar deals with other corporations.
However, remember that Google’s business comes from pay-per-click advertising (PPC). PPC advertising is the lifeblood of Google, and even a small business can spend hundreds of dollars a day on Adwords. Google probably isn’t going to stick the knife into all of the thousands of businesses that use its services, otherwise, it will simply lose its competitive edge.
Still, there is an upside to the Google buy button for e-commerce business owners. Right now, most retailers see their online sales coming from desktops. Mobile purchasing is in its infancy, but with the buy button being rolled out to mobile first, this is a distinct advantage for e-commerce retailers.
“As it is, most customers research a product on their smartphones, but due to the difficulty of ordering and filling out forms on their mobile devices, they either give up on the purchase or switch to a desktop computer to make the purchase,” says Adam Farra, CEO of HostGator.
When someone clicks on the buy button under the “Shop on Google” banner and is directed to a retailer-branded page hosted by Google, this is how Google makes its money. The customer's shipping information and contact email is sent on to the retailer, but payment information is kept by Google. It’s called “frictionless payment.”
Mung Ki Woo, executive vice president for digital products and solutions at MasterCard, suggests that Google’s end game in implementing the buy button is that consumers can purchase anything from anywhere.
Preparing for the Launch of the Google Buy Button
According to Nii Ahene, COO at CPC Strategy, “It’s really a wait and see for most retailers that are not enrolled in the beta. Google does have a tendency to use Q4 to launch, so we will see how accelerated the roll out is actually going to be.”
This means, that as an e-commerce retailer, you have some time to prepare. Right now, you need to make sure you have an optimized mobile site. You also need to make sure that you can publish data on availability and price that is 100 percent accurate.
