Google makes mobile move ahead of holidays

Retailers will have a new friction-free way to convert shoppers into buyers this holiday season as Google expects buy button functionality piloted last year to be broadly available by the fourth quarter.

Twenty-five merchants currently participate in Google’s mobile buy button program launched last year, according to Vineet Buch, director of product management for shopping search with Google. The program enables a user who initiates a search query on a mobile device to receive results containing a link, or buy button, from which they can seamlessly consummate a transaction with a retailer. Widespread availability of the enhanced functionality is the latest development in the rapid shift to mobile that is altering how retailers engage, inform and increase conversion.

“The users on mobile are looking for answers. They are not interested in opening 10 different tabs. They want magic to happen,” Buch said during a keynote address at ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst conference. Buch and ChannelAdvisor’s Link Walls, vice president of product management with the cloud-based e-commerce solutions provider, shared the stage at the annual event where Walls questioned Buch about Google’s views on commerce and retail initiatives. “We want to make sure (mobile users) know they are consummating the transaction with the merchant. The constraints on scaling the program have not been due to a lack of interest from merchants.”

Buch said Google needed to build functionality in order to offer a full-featured user experience on the mobile landing page, the buy button capability and to make it easier for merchants to interact with Google, which he conceded isn’t always easy. Without offering specifics in front of an audience of roughly 1,000 people, Buch said, “there are a few things we are working on.”

By year end, the mobile buy button functionality will be pretty much open to any merchant who wants to come in, although the program will grow linearly for the next several quarters, Buch said while gesturing with a slight upward sweep of his arm.

“For a lot of people (the mobile buy button) makes a lot of sense,” Buch said.

The timing couldn’t be better for merchants looking to increase conversion on mobile devices that for the first time in 2015 exceeded desktop computers and tablet devices combined as the major source of traffic to Google. The search leader wants to do a better job of letting merchants tell a story about who they are, what they stand for and then connect search results with the availability of products.

“You should expect to see us innovate along that dimension,” Buch said. “We want the user to feel like they are assisted by Google, not just shown a handful of products and told, ‘now you figure it out.’”