What is Instagram Shopping and how to apply it
Laia Ordoñez
20/04/2018
-
Finally, the favorite network of photos and trends lovers get to work on conversion. We are going to tell you what Instagram Shopping is.
-
-
When we least expected it, Instagram Shopping arrived causing a certain commotion in the social selling. Ladies and gentlemen: we can already sell on Instagram.
-
Can we sell on Instagram?
-
One of the recurrent complaints of those who manage an eCommerce on Instagram is that it was simply not set out to sell.In the end, Facebook, which lovingly takes care of this network, wants to keep users within it. Within social media it has always had really high engagement data. Why changing if it continues to add users per month to some already stratospheric figures?
-
-
As we say, Facebook did not want to become Instagram a source of referral traffic for your store. In fact, it does not allow more than a link, and it has to come from bio or Stories never directly on publications.The thing is that they have decided to relax its policy and make selling on Instagram natively, not only possible, but also easy. We can start forgetting about third-party tools if we wish (although they still add value)
-
What is Instagram Shopping?
-
From now on, this new feature is already available in Spain. It basically allows us to label the products in our catalogue as we would do with other users.This type of publication is identified as "affordable" because it adds a small shopping bag icon in the upper right corner of the feed´s image, so that the user already knows that he can interact with it.
-
-
How does it work?
-
It is very simple for the user, the truth is that it is perfectly integrated within the app browsing experience.Once you access an image that allows the purchase we are informed about it directly by means of a short text: "tap to browse", a call to basic action that is reinforced by the appearance of a white point on those articles tagged in the image (it can be one or more)
-
-
At the time that you press on the product in question, a small floating window will appear. This tooltip contains simply the name as title, the price highlighted in blue color and a small icon in the form of an arrow pointing right that supports the idea of progression.
-
-
It gets interesting because if the user continues through the conversion we will be only two steps away from having him in our shop. First, he will access a brief summary within the application itself via Instagram Shopping. In some way it is a brief landing page with the featured product (outside the context of the feed´s picture), price, description, and a large buy button.
-
-
Now the ball is now in our court. The client will go directly to our store to close the conversion.
-
Requirements to access Instagram Shopping
-
In reality they are not too demanding. The first thing you need is, obviously a company's profile on Instagram and a business Facebook page, it is essential to be an online shop.They also require a minimum of activity in your account, you must have at least 9 photos uploaded to the feed and the latest version of the application.
-
The catalogue
-
This step is the most delicate, but it is not very complicated. You need to have uploaded your products to a Facebook´s catalogue. If you have not done so, do it now because this also allows you to tag products in publications that you upload to that network. You can access commercial Manager and on the tab 'business settings' navigate to the catalogues option.
-
-
Now you have to access or create your new catalogue. You can choose between several categories:
- (generic) products
- Hotels
- Flights
- Destinations
- Home listings
- Vehicles
Once assigned a name and roles to the users you consider necessary, the catalogue has already been created and appears in your administrator. -
-
Now you can add products by creating a feed. The simplest is that you download the template they offer you and complete it with all your products. There are some obligatory fields such as:
- ID
- Title
- Description
- Availability
- State
- Price
- Links to images
Just fill in the template and ready: you have your catalogue available on Instagram Shopping and you can label the products. -
Successful cases
-
If we stick to what testimonies gathered in the official blog of Instagram say, the results from those who have been using it are more than good.Brands such as J.Crew or Warby Parker, which I have talked about on this blog more than once due to their capacity for innovation and strategic vision, are part of the trial since 2016. They considered that this conversion is just what a channel was missing that even being inspiring, it did not give you any mechanisms to buy easily.Other brand that has implemented Instagram Shopping is a less well known. It is called Lulus and they are very surprised positively to see how 33% of users who click the purchase option they end up accessing its eCommerce.
-
Frankly: I do not know what you are waiting for to dive into Instagram Shopping. Does not it seem a great idea?
-
Images | Instagram and Statista.