Wouldn’t it be convenient to browse through your favourite influencers’ or brands’ Instagram account, see a pair of shoes you’ve been longing for and be able to buy them straight from within the app without having to leave?!

Well, the answer is yes, and there are rumours that Instagram is currently working on making this a possibility with a new stand-alone shopping app, IG (Instagram Shopping).

Where it all began

The Instagram shopping experience was released in 2016, where businesses were able to build a visual storefront on their profiles for their followers to explore products, prices and additional information about their products.

Image Source [https://help.instagram.com/191462054687226]

With these shopping posts, businesses can choose up to 5 products to feature within an image, or 20 products per carousel, tag the prices and link to their website where users can then decide to purchase. All it takes is a single tap from the user to view product info and then make his or her journey to a businesses mobile site to purchase.

Being a visual app with over 500 million daily active users this shopping feature was a clever step in the right direction and it was clear that Instagrams e-commerce journey was, and is not stopping there.

Image Source [https://instagram-press.com/blog/2018/06/12/shopping-in-instagram-stories/?ref=igb_shopping]

In June 2018, Instagram extended their shopping experience by testing product stickers on Instagram Stories. To date, Instagram Stories are used by over 400 million users every day so bringing shopping to Stories was the next best move.

According to Statista, the number of monthly active users and businesses using the app have both doubled since 2016 and around 80% of users follow a business.

Image Source [https://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly-active-instagram-users/]

Statistics also show that users between the ages of 18 – 34 are most active on the app, which is a huge demographic for most businesses.

Why Should You Care?

Instagram has made the decision making process for a user to purchase a product quick and easy.

Seeing a product in situ or being used by an influencer has a huge psychological impact on a users decision to buy, so by adding a shopping experience, Instagram has already made purchasing a quicker process.  

If Instagram releases a stand-alone shopping app, the user won’t even have to leave a business’s profile, making the decision and action to buy an even quicker one.  

If your business’s target audience falls between the ages of 18 – 34 and you sell products, even services, then you should definitely make a move towards having Instagram as part of your social media marketing strategy. Instagram has a very simple tutorial on how to tag products in posts and how to get started with shopping.

At the moment, businesses are able to:

• Promote content
• Share images
• Share stories
• Tag users on both images and video
• Tag products, prices and product info
• Share long-form video content and go live on IGTV

The new stand-alone app is only a rumour at this stage, but this is the perfect opportunity for all businesses to utilise the shopping functionalities and get familiar with all the other great features Instagram has to offer.

If you have any questions, please drop us a comment below and go check out our latest post on Instagram and IGTV : What We Know So Far.

Tags: Instagram, Instagram shopping, news, shopping