Perhaps the most genius part of Amazon is its one-click buy feature. No doubt this has earned it a fair wedge of cash, as if you see something you want, it can be yours without any real depth or soul-searching. Humans are naturally impulsive creatures, and frictionless buying takes advantage of that aspect of our psyche.
And now, the feature has escaped the confines of the web, and is making its way to traditional print and television advertising. And it’s all thanks to ZapBuy.
ZapBuy, from OmniWay, lets customers buy products simply by capturing a QR code. You could be watching a TV show, or reading a newspaper. If you see something you want, you just need to whip out your phone and scan the code. ZapBuy takes care of the rest.
In a statement, OmnyWay Ashok Narasimhan said “ZapBuy’s secret sauce is that it converts any surface into a point of commerce.”
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“By removing the friction from the process of making a purchase from an ad, OmnyWay is improving the shopping experience for consumers, leading to a significant improvement in conversions and sales,” he added.
The beauty of ZapWay is that it’s not tied to any particular medium, as the QR codes could be integrated anywhere – on a TV or a print advert, or in a catalog.
So, it’s probably not going to be great for our wallets. It’s probably not going to be great for our closets, either, which will soon bulge under the weight of so much shit we don’t really need.
But it’s going to be great for advertisers, which will be able to eke even more value out of their spots. And it’s going to be great for retailers, which will now have a path to consumers in a way that’s just as lubricated as Amazon’s.
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