Instagram, the image sharing social network, has announced that they’re testing and soon-to-be launching an in-app shopping experience. This is something that many of us avid Instagram users have been waiting for. When I’m scrolling down my feed, and a pair of shoes, or some home decor catches my eye, I want to know where I can buy it. Currently you can only tag in what brand it’s from, but you can’t tag it’s price or a link to the actual product on their site. According to Instagram, 84% of shoppers, browse, research and compare products via an app or on a web browser, so it’s clearly not just me. There’s definitely a trend in social media platforms creating some sort of shopping experience, as it was only the other week when I was talking about Facebook releasing their Market Place, you can read up on that article here.
So, How Will It Work?
For the test launch, Instagram is teaming up with 20 different brands, including fashion retailers, Kate Spade, Coach and J.Crew.
When you tap on the image, small pop-ups will appear with the product name and price. Then when you click on the pop-up, it will direct you to a page with more product details, and also a link that will direct you to where you can purchase the product.
Here’s a quick step-by-step video that Instagram has created, to show you how it will work.
Who Will Benefit?
I believe that this will be a successful new feature for Instagram, not only for Instagram itself, but I really believe that this will also benefit brands. It will make directing customers from Instagram to products, far more efficiently than it currently is. It’ll make organic posts more engaging and increase traffic to your website, all the things that brands want!
As an avid Instagrammer and shopper, I’m really looking forward to this feature going live. It will make mine and many others shopping experience far simpler. I often find most products I want to buy on Instagram, and currently I’m having to spend some time going on brands website, typing words into their search bar that I think will relate to what I’ve seen on their Instagram, and then having to scroll through all those search results, until I finally find what I was looking for. Soon, it should just be a click of a button on Instagram!