Competition is good! There’s nothing truer than this. Especially after Amazon’s quick growth and utter dominance in the e-commerce industry, all the other businesses really needed to start innovating and release new tools to limit Amazon’s expansion.
Instagram released an in-app checkout. Google is trying to do the same with the Shopping Actions feature.
Now it’s eBay’s turn.
What’s in the pipeline?
eBay is partnering with Monotote, an instant checkout tool, to allow consumers to interact directly with products they are looking for. Without having to leave their other activities, they will be led to eBay to get more info about the product or to purchase it.
In other words, if you’re reading a blog post about a vacuum cleaner, and the blog post is linked to eBay, you can get more information about that vacuum cleaner without leaving the blog post: Price, shipping, product description and availability.
The key factor here is that the purchase process doesn’t interrupt your other activities. This is exactly like IG’s in-app checkout, but with blog posts instead of IG posts, and with eBay instead of some random e-commerce store.
This will benefit both eBay and publishers. For eBay itself, the purchase process will be simplified and streamlined, which should lead to more conversions.
On the publisher’s side, it will help them to squeeze more money from their content.
Is it enough to compete with Amazon?
Whatever happens, this is another innovation that proves a big trend: the purchase process is becoming simpler and easier, And the conversion occurs in the same place where the prospect has been inspired.
Amazon’s 1-click order, Instagram’s instant check-out, Shopping Actions by Google. And now, this.
It looks like nobody wants the customer to think about their purchase.
-Oh look at this bag, it looks nice.
-Sold!
