Report: The State Of Buy Buttons In Q2 2019

In the year of 2019, buy buttons are so common, they are almost a given. More than seven in 10 leading eCommerce merchants now offer at least one buy button, and one in five now offer two or more.

That said, there are signs that eCommerce merchants’ buy button offerings may be on the decline. The share of eTailers that support at least one buy button has been largely stagnant for some time, increasing from 72.7 percent in Q1 2018 to 73.1 percent in Q2 2018, only to drop back to 72.7 percent by Q2 2019.

Judging by these numbers, it looks like buy buttons may be losing their appeal. Their adoption, however, tends to vary, and even more so across different industries. For the Q2 2019 Buy Button Index, PYMNTS researched the buy button offerings of over 1,000 leading American eCommerce retailers across 18 industries to find out.

The research examined how these merchants’ buy button options relate to several key indicators, including their average annual revenues, the average number of unique site visitors per month and the average ticket price of items sold, to cite a few examples. The Index compared the results of the analyses to historical data to obtain a broader perspective on how buy buttons have proliferated since PYMNTS began studying buy button adoption in Q4 2016.

The study showed that buy button adoption among the top 1,000 eTailers may be slowing — but not across the board. Some buttons, like those of Amazon Pay and Google Pay, saw their adoption rise increase between Q2 2018 and Q2 2019. In Q2 2019, 14.6 percent of eTailers offered the Amazon Pay buy button, up from 13.6 percent in Q2 2018. Meanwhile, the share of eTailers that offered Google Pay increased from 0.9 percent to 3.9 percent.

Even though Amazon Pay and Google Pay are gaining traction, they are still far behind the industry leader: PayPal. The PayPal buy button was supported by 69.5 percent of eTailers in Q2 2019 — 3.7 times as many sites as any other button.

These incremental increases in buy button offerings may seem small, but they result from very real, changes happening in the broader eCommerce market.

To learn more about buy buttons’ evolving role in the eCommerce industry, download the report.