Good news for brands and sellers: On June 12^th 2018, Instagram announced that it will be expanding its shopping feature to stories. For now, there is only a pilot available for big brands like Hugo Boss and Adidas testing the new feature. However, it may be rolling out for every brands in the world, over time. Marketing specialists and businesses are already salivating.

Social media and ads, why is it so important?

Most people spend the majority of their time online on social media. Not only on their smartphone, which is the big winner in this social revolution, but also (or still) on desktop computers, too. Even though different generations spend their time on different social channels, the important factor is that they spend most time on a social platform. As an example, older generations prefer spending time on Facebook. Teenagers, on the other hand, enjoy Snapchat and Instagram, where they can follow big influencers and aim at becoming one of the big Instagram models. Even business people spend time on social platforms, mostly LinkedIn.

Instagram, a display cabinet for brands and inspiration

Social media are free platforms, but to be able to stay free of charge, they need ads. A lot of users on Instagram and Pinterest are looking for inspiration, often for products. This makes it fairly easy for brands and businesses to place their ads and get their users to tolerate or even appreciate them. Since the beginning of Instagram shopping over a year ago, the platform took a clear step towards becoming a vitrine. This step led to big successes for many brands.

How does Instagram Shopping work?

Instagram Shopping is a feature that gives businesses a chance to use the platform as a storefront. On a photograph, you can see a small shopping bag icon, you can them press on it and see the price. By adding this product to your shopping bag, you immediately go to the page of the product, where you can easily add it to your shopping cart and proceed to check-out.

“Shopping on Instagram gives your business an immersive storefront for people to explore your best products with a single tap.”

With shopping on Instagram, you can choose photos you’d like to feature, tag posts with up to five products per image or up to twenty products per carousel, add filters or captions and you’re done. You can also save drafts or preview your posts.”(cf. Instagram)

With this feature, users can save time and directly buy something, without having to search for it online first.

Instagram shopping in stories

Instagram stories are ephemeral videos and photos a user can share and that will disappear after 24 hours. This is the most watched feature by the users. Over 300 million people watch stories on Instagram on a daily basis.

Thus the stories on Instagram are the Holy Grail for marketers and businesses. And it is now about to become a reality. Businesses can now market their products on Instagram Stories. It is a new and creative playground for brands to market their products. As Linda Dauriz, Director Customer Experience and Corporate Development at Hugo Boss commented, this feature satisfies the constant thirst for something new of social media users. This feature can give an added value to the customer.

You will be allowed to add stickers with a shopping bag icon to your Stories. The feature lets you even tag and “add” several products at once. Upon tapping, you can read additional information and the price tags. Users then have an option to add the item to their bag and check out over the brand’s page.

In a nutshell, if you are an e-commerce platform and you would like to use a new feature to bring your products to your customers, stay tuned for shopping on Instagram Stories.