Flickr CC/Mike MozartGoogle wants more people to buy products directly through its search pages.Google has become the latest company to explore the launch of a "buy" button and other additional shopping features as it looks to beef up its e-commerce arsenal to fight off Amazon, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Google has been approaching retailers about the introduction of a buy button within its Google Shopping search results, sources told The Wall Street Journal. Currently, Google Shopping simply redirects users to retailers' websites, rather than letting them buy direct from a search result.
The rollout would be similar to Amazon's "one-click ordering" feature, which also appears in its off-site "commerce ads," and allows users to type in their credit card and delivery information just once in order to make future purchases. This could be Google's big attempt to prevent Amazon eating into its market share when it comes to shopping.
Separately, The Wall Street journal says Google is also exploring the launch of a marketing program that would allow partner merchants to promote two-day shipping for products purchased via Google Shopping. That would not meet the 1-day delivery service offered to Amazon Prime customers, but does resemble programs offered by other shopping services like ShopperRunner Inc, which offers two-day shipping from thousands of partners including American Eagle, Shoes.com and the NBA store for a $79 a year fee. Google also already has its own $95 per year Express same/next-day service, which launched in October and is currently only available in the US.
However, sources have told The Wall Street Journal that both of these ideas might never come to fruition, as retailers have been cool to the propositions so far, fearing price competition and a lack of control over the shopper experience. Were Google to roll out a buy button, it would also get more data about how its ads convert into sales, likely pushing up advertising prices.
Business Insider has contacted Google for comment. This article will be updated once this has been received.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has previously described Amazon as Google's biggest search rival, as many users simply bypass Google and go straight to the e-commerce site when they are thinking about shopping.
Indeed, in the third quarter, 39% of US online shoppers began researching their purchases on Amazon, while just 11% started in Google, according to research from Forrester, cited by The Wall Street Journal. In 2009, 24% of shoppers began their research on search engines and just 18% started with Amazon. This is a trend replicated in the UK. Some 61% of UK shopper have found gift ideas from searching Amazon this Christmas, while 50% got their inspiration from Google searches, according to a survey from search experience optimization platform Searchmetrics.
Searchmetrics
Google has some work to do in getting consumers to trust the company with payment information if it is to fend of Amazon. Research released this week from Bizrate Insights, a division of ecommerce marketing solutions company Connexity, found that 45.4% of consumers trust Amazon with their payment and personal information, while just 12.9% trust Google. Bizrate Insights surveyed more than 6,200 online buyers.
Facebook and Twitter have also recently made moves to test their own "buy" buttons.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
