Share a product, and send the brand’s own post instead of a catalogue photo

Most shop share buttons send the same thing: a link to the product page. The preview that link produces on a phone is a catalogue photo on a white background and the first line of the product description. It is accurate, and it is the least persuasive version of the product the brand owns.

The persuasive version already exists. A brand posts about its products: campaign photography, a video, a caption somebody worked on. When that post exists, it is what a shopper should be sharing.

On a product, the brand’s post is what gets shared

When a shopper shares a product from a Rutba storefront, what is sent is decided in three layers:

1. The brand’s most recent post about that product, if there is one. Its page carries the campaign’s photography or video and its caption in a full preview, with the product one tap below.
2. Otherwise, a caption that once went out with the product’s link, if one did.
3. Otherwise, the product’s own page, which is never wrong, only less rich.

The posts come from the shop’s own social publishing, so a brand that posts about its products gets better shares without doing anything extra.

A product link previews as a catalogue photo. The brand already made something better; share that.

Twelve places, and two honest buttons

The share row goes to WhatsApp, Facebook, X, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Telegram, Threads, Bluesky, Reddit, Tumblr, VK and LINE, each a plain link to that network’s own share page, so nothing from any of them loads on the shop until a shopper chooses it.

Instagram and TikTok are there too, and they are buttons rather than links for a specific reason: neither offers a web share page, so nothing can pre-fill a post on either from a link. Pretending otherwise would be a button that silently does nothing. Instead they copy the caption, ready to paste, and TikTok’s uploader opens with it.

The whole gallery, not one picture

A link preview carries a single image on every network, and no markup changes that. The clipboard cannot carry a set of pictures either. What does work, on phones, is handing the actual image files to the phone’s own share sheet, which Instagram, WhatsApp and the rest accept as a carousel. So on devices that support it, a shopper can send every picture of a product, not just the first.

Small, because it is not the point of the page

The icons are deliberately small, and on a product page the share control is a small pill rather than a second big button. A shopping page has one call to action (buy) and a row of share buttons competing with it for weight is in the wrong place. There is one share control per surface, never two offering the same thing.