The Buy Button SDK

How Shopify’s Buy Button Can Help You Sell On The Blogosphere Without Trying Too Hard 

The Short of It

People use the internet for a million things other than shopping. Building 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 a few different faces of the internet, and are a great way for people already telling stories online to find new market opportunities without being intrusive or repelling to their audiences through unwelcome sales pitches. They’re also a great way for someone with a good product to expand their content into other forms like blogs and art. 

Buy Buttons: How Is This Any Different?

Buy Buttons are a clickable button you can put on any website you own (or even in an email) that lets your viewers buy something then 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’d like. Your readers can securely check out right on screen, and they are usually used to highlight one targeted product at a time rather than having your customer dig through your whole store. 

Who’s It For?

Turn Your Tumblr Into Your Rent Fund

Buy Buttons are ideal for people who already have an online presence and are already driving traffic somewhere. For instance, anyone who owns a website hosted on WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, Wix etc and already has a readership. Or, for example, those putting on speeches, trade shows, festivals and book or product launches. Collecting donations, selling merchandise, tickets or anything else becomes a natural part of your website without needing to direct people to a third party site. 

Existing Shopify Merchants Can Jump Right In

If you don’t have a storytelling or brand platform yet, but you do have a Shopify online store, Buy Buttons are a super easy way to reach out to new potential partners. If you find bloggers or websites that are attracting people in your market, you can suggest selling directly on their websites with a Buy Button – vastly expanding your reach and reducing your marketing and PR resources.  

Business Baby Steps

The Buy Button is what lots of bloggers, writers, artists and other creators are looking for. If you’re not ready to start an entire online business, but you see an opportunity to sell a product or two as part of your current hustle, Buy Buttons are a great first step. You can integrate them directly with whatever online platform or blog you’re already using, and test the waters to see if you can expand into a full online business. 

Not convinced? Check out this article about ways you can use a Buy Button to create commerce anywhere. 

Fit In With The Group

The whole point of Buy Buttons is to integrate with your website. A Buy Button is fully customisable in terms of font, size, shape etc. as well as the actual embedded shopping cart. Buy Buttons are integrated on computers, tablets and phones. 

Keep Using Shopify Admin

The advantage of the Buy Button is that while making it super easy for your online traffic to get to your store, you still have the same easy features of Shopify Admin. Keep your normal sales reports, data analytics and business tools in one place while you’re store goes all over the web. 

Where Does It Go?

Buy Buttons can go basically anywhere on a website. It’s quite common for them to be

• On a side bar

• Directly on a landing page

• On click-through content itself, such as a photo of the product you’re promoting

• Even on default error pages

The SDK

The Shopify Buy Button is available to all Shopify plans as a sales channel. 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 ShopifyBuy that’s available here. The SDK is intended for developers, and allows you to customise features such as quantities or colour options, generate a checkout URL and more. You can use the SDK to choose what product you want to use with Buy Buttons, where on your site it will go, what the customer sees and how the checkout process runs. You can then pull the embeddable code and get started. You can learn more about how to embed a Buy Button here. 

Looking For A Buy Button Buddy?

Elkfox is here to help. We are a team of certified Shopify Experts who can develop Buy Buttons for your site, or help you figure out the best way to use them effectively. Contact us today to get started. 

Image via Shopify