Report: The State of Buy Buttons On The Web

Twenty-one years ago, shopping from the comfort of your home was only possible through infomercials and home shopping networks.

Then, in 1995, Amazon introduced the world to the notion of “online checkout” on their site, allowing customers to check out with just the click of a branded buy button. A few years later, PayPal’s button helped boost fledgling marketplace eBay to the big time, and the eCommerce boom was on.

More than a decade later, those buy buttons are having big effects on the economy at large. The world is now obsessed with digital and online shopping, and mobile and digital wallets and other simple forms of checkout are all the rage. To find out more about the intricacies of buy buttons, PYMNTS and Abine collaborated to create the Ready. Set. Buy (Buttons) Insider Report by examining the websites of the top 965 online retailers.

Some things don’t change, and even after two decades, PayPal still reigns as king of the online buy button. According to our analysis, its blue buy buttons appear on 67.6 percent of the top online merchants, with more than 650 of the top merchants surveyed offering checkout via PayPal. Amazon is a distant but surprising second, accepted by almost 10 percent of merchants as of the time of our research.

Other key takeaways include:

– 4.1 percent of merchants accepted Visa Checkout, while 2.8 percent accepted Masterpass, and less than 1 percent accepted American Express Checkout and Chase Pay.

– 13.9 percent of the top 965 online merchants accept more than one mobile wallet or buy button.

– Merchants that added the American Express Checkout button had better online sales performance, conversion rates and monthly visitors than merchants offering buttons from other providers.

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About The Report

The Ready. Set. Buy (Button) Insider Report, a PYMNTS.com and Abine collaboration, is designed to detail the state of play regarding buy buttons online and how they made those decisions. We examined the websites of the top 1,000 online merchants and observed patterns of buy buttons and type and size of merchant, average online sales and the opportunity to drive conversion and sales. We also analyzed data to delve into the strategic intent of the players for approaching the merchants on which their buy buttons sit.