It’s been five months since Amazon announced the Dash button, a physical device slightly larger than your thumb that lets you orders more goods with a single tap. Now, the Seattle tech giant is taking the Dash button out of the invite-only stage and making it available to all Prime customers for purchase.
Prime customers can purchase Dash buttons for $5 each starting Wednesday; the company will credit you for the cost of your first button.
The company is also expanding the number of available button types -– one for each brand partner -– from 18 to 29. The additional 11 brands include Ziploc, Dixie tableware, Hefty trash bags, Finish dishwashing detergent, Depend diapers, Ice Breakers Mints, Orbit gum, Greenies dental chews, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day products, Digestive Advantage probiotic supplements, and Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% whey protein.
Ziploc is one of 11 new brand partners participating in Amazon’s Dash button program.
Each branded button can be slightly customized through Amazon’s main app to order products, but only from that single brand. That means pressing the Hefty-branded Dash butto, will automatically reorder a specified number of Hefty trash bags. The same goes for Dixie cups or Orbit gum. Items are delivered via Prime’s standard two-day shipping option, but users can also opt for same-day delivery for an additional price.
Amazon hopes shoppers will pepper their homes with these Dash buttons. A home chock-full of them may technically make it easier for folks to buy goods (and buy more often), but it also lowers the chances of folks straying outside Amazon when reordering from the ecommerce behemoth is a mere button press away.
“Our goal is to get that easy one click order experience so that they [customers] never run out of something,” Daniel Rausch, Amazon director of product management, told Mashable.
Rausch says Amazon expanded the Dash button program based on early customer feedback. But whether shoppers adopt Amazon’s Dash buttons en masse is unclear. Your Kindle laying around is one thing, but Dash buttons may prove a harder sell despite their low price and Amazon’s new $5 credit deal (that is, unless you’re a hardcore Prime user who likes the idea of Dash buttons). Those buttons are, let’s face it, veritable brand advertisements sprinkled around the home. Then again, many shoppers just may not care either way.
But for now, Amazon thinks enough there’s enough pent-up demand for the Dash button to become something more than a niche product.