Instagram Debuts Additional Shopping Options for the Holiday Season

I don’t know about you, but Instagram has easily become one of my favorite ways to shop online.

Why? Because the ads aren’t “ad-ey” and the products featured in my feed are typically things I’m actually interested in based on my double-tapping history.

Instagram knows me inside and out, and I’m ok with that. Take my money.

Now, you might remember back in September, that Instagram introduced product stickers in Stories for users to easily learn more when discovering a new product. Additionally, they also announced a shopping channel in Explore.

Now, with the holidays already knocking at our door, Instagram announced three expanded ways users can use the platform to shop from brands you already love and keep track of your shopping inspiration all in one place.

1. Save to Your New Shopping Collection

When you find that perfect item on Instagram, now you can just save it to your “Shopping collection” to revisit later.

When you tap a product tag in Stories or your Feed, tap the save icon in the bottom right corner to save it to your Shopping collection.

This isn’t much different than the current “Save” feature, but with this specific focus on shopping, I imagine brands are more likely to adopt the tool and users will feel more inclined to buy.

We may see Instagram building on the potential of the tag feature in the future.

2. Shop on Business Profiles

This is a redesign that is currently being tested, but still very useful to discuss.

When visiting a business profile on Instagram, soon you may be able to tap on a “Shop” button to see products and details, like the item name, price, and the original post that features the item. This allows users to browse all products from a single brand, in one place. Nice!

For brands, this may seem like  simply another use of Shopping Tags, but it makes it much easier for users to view additional products from a single brand as opposed to scrolling through all of a brand’s posts to find specific products. It also enables brands to reach potential buyers who may frequent Instagram, but never really visit individual brand sites to shop.

3. Shopping in Feed Videos

Last, but not least, you can also now shop in videos from brands you love (what?!?). When viewing a video in your feed, simply tap the shopping icon in the bottom left corner to reveal featured products in the video and subsequently, learn more about them.

For the user, this is just like Shopping tags, but since there isn’t any ability to “tag” a moving object, Instagram provides a list instead.

Since we are seeing more and more video content, especially on Instagram, this is a great addition that explains the ways brands can provide a direct correlation to sales from their Instagram presence. Win, win.

So What Does This Mean for Marketers?

As marketers, we all know the importance of social media, but these updates make it much more tangible.

Instagram has introduced features that make it significantly easier for businesses to drive traffic to their products and have users find them.

Additionally, users have the ability to find and save items of interest in a much more organized and eCommerce-focused manner.

As a brand, Instagram has allowed your presence to be maximized in the eCommerce arena, just in time for the holidays.

It’s a great time to experiment with these tools given the holiday rush.

If they can be proven successful, it’s a great opportunity to start tagging products now. 2019 will no doubt see the evolution of tags and even more advantage for business accounts, especially those focused on eCommerce.

Images courtesy of Instagram.