After over a year of testing by 20 American brands, Instagram has finally implemented the 20th of March, the Shopping functionality in 8 countries around the world. In Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, and United Kingdom!

Instagram becomes an e-commerce through its Shopping functionality.

This new feature enables companies with a business account to sell their products via their Instagram pictures and thus simplify the purchase process for their followers.

Brands are now able to tag a product as if it were a person. Each tag displays the price of the product. By pressing it, the user is directly redirected to the product description page. Instagram reduces considerably the number of clicks in the buying process, which facilitates compulsive purchases and can increase the conversions of the companies! In the United States, Spearmint Baby has already increased its audience by 25% and its revenues by 8%.

As soon as a company publishes more than nine Shopping posts, a new tab appears on their account: the tab ” Shop “. By clicking on this tab, the instagrammers can find all the publications tagged by the company, in the form of catalog. Instagram goes into e-commerce! Although this new feature is currently free, Instagram does not take any percentage on sales made.

Instagram, a growing asset for mobile marketing.

Instagram has become the ideal social network for brands, more than 2 million of them are present there nowadays. The shopping function will be a real help to them. Indeed, brands could add pictures of their products, could make their promotions but it was not possible to add an external link, except in their biographies.  It was also possible to redirect users through the stories, by clicking on “See more”. Now, Instagram allows brands to tag 5 products per picture and 20 in the carousels. The instagrammers have now the direct links of the products shown in their news feeds.

How to implement it?

• Synchronize a product catalog with the Facebook store
• Click on “options” in a company profile, scroll down and select “products”.
• Authenticate your Instagram business account via your Facebook account.
• Choose a product catalog to synchronize with Instagram for Instagram Shopping.
• Upload a picture in the usual way, options will be presented to tag people, but also products.
• Select “tag products” and in the search bar, type the name of the product.
• Move the tag to the right place in the picture.
• Instagram will pull all information from Facebook’s product catalog, including a link to the company’s website from the picture.

Only companies offering products benefit of Instagram Shopping. It is not possible to add this option when a company offers services.

Instagram shopping : New behavioral analysis tool?

Through this update, companies can know how many instagrammers clicked on their products, viewed their descriptions, and how many were until the act of purchase. This enables them to analyze consumer behaviour better and thus better target their audiences.

In the UK, one major retailer immediately adopted Instagram Shopping : Marks & Spencer. Why not you? Leads International can help you in this process, contact us for more information. And don’t forget the importance of being present on Instagram: 80% of the members of the Instagram community follow at least one brand!