The Oakland Raiders streamlined the shopping experience for fans by using a purchasing tool that let the National Football League club’s supporters buy related merchandise on Facebook and Twitter without leaving the sites.

With the XpressBuy ad platform, fans could look up product images, options, pricing, real-time availability and buy without having to click through to the retail site, resulting in more than 16 percent of products selling out. With Home Depot and Best Buy among the program’s users, the results pointed to the value for both consumers and retailers of reducing purchase friction at the moment of interest across platforms.

“[The Oakland Raiders] benefited from a seamless way to both drive engagement with the Raiders gear and handle impulse buys while making the shopping experience incredibly easy for their fans,” said Murali Subbarao, founder and president of XpressBuy.

“These posts also ended up being in the top 10 in the month for engagement and reach.”

Handpicked products
Around topics such as the NFL Draft, breast cancer awareness and remembering Raider greats, the Raiders’ social media manager posted on Facebook ads for one to four handpicked products with the XpressBuy link.

Receiving item color options.

When fans on the site engaged with the ad, they received access to updated product inventory. Then they were informed of available sizes, colors and prices.

Once they decided on purchases, their billing and delivery information was auto-populated. With a few taps, the merchandise was on the way.

Sales for one product rose five times in a few hours, according to Mr. Subbarao. The purchases ranged from $20 to $150.

When XpressBuy’s system is set up on existing ecommerce and mcommerce engines, it can deliver six times the conversion rates of traditional click-through advertising, according to its Web site.

The platform also captures data that reflects both purchase intent and purchase preference.

While marketers today have an array of tools to surprise and delight customers, a challenge is eliminating friction that can obstruct engagement and conversion.

Marketers are becoming aware that it does not pay to develop personalized, location-aware content if customers cannot log on to an application. Simplicity is the key to ensuring a friction-free experience.

Facebook, other social networking sites and brands are increasingly trying to streamline the shopping experience for mobile users to eliminate friction.

Facebook’s announcement this spring that it would position its Messenger application as a platform focused on content aimed to offer a seamless journey for consumers.

Facebook unveiled at its F8 developer conference Businesses on Messenger, which would allow people who purchase something from a Web site to receive updates in Messenger and continue their conversation with the business in the app.

Meanwhile, Google plans to add buy buttons to sponsored search results on smartphones, a move that could create a new mobile shopping experience while helping drive up cost-per-click rates.

Mobile users who click on a buy button in a sponsored search result on mobile could be taken to a product page where they could choose the sizes and colors as well as complete a purchase. The product pages would feature a retailer’s branding.

In the moment
The Oakland Raiders were able to enhance online sales by monetizing ads based on in-the moment trends and consumer desire.

Keeping consumers from going to retail site.

“Mobile traffic has gone up dramatically to make up 26 percent of traffic to a retailer site, but accounts for only 10 percent of the orders,” Mr. Subbarao said.

“There is a need for buy buttons optimized for mobile to minimize the friction to purchase at the moment of interest,” he said. “The XpressBuy ad commerce platform is designed to power buy buttons precisely for this purpose and captures extra sales anywhere without having the user leave the context and hop to the retail site.”

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York