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Instagram just made it a whole lot easier for people to shop on its platform - and it's great news for brands of all sizes
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Instagram just made it a whole lot easier for people to shop on its platform - and it's great news for brands of all sizes

Screen Shot 2018 09 17 at 2.09.11 PM

Madewell

  • Instagram is looking to ramp up shopping on the platform, expanding shopping tags to stories globally and also launching a dedicated shopping channel on Explore.
  • By doing so, Instagram is looking to tap into the growing consumer expectation that they should be able to buy things directly from any and all web images
  • For brands, it is potentially an opportunity to tell an even deeper story about what's behind their products - and ideally get people to buy things
  • The feature also widens Instagram Stories' lead on Snapchat even more when it comes to courting e-commerce brands, say marketers.

With Stories quickly gaining steam, Instagram is dialing up its efforts to get both brands and consumers to spend more time on the format.

And hopefully spend more time buying things.

Specifically, Instagram is making shopping easier on the platform by letting people discover and learn more about products featured on branded Stories.

People can already buy things through Instagram's main feed. Now brands can add stickers with a shopping bag icon to their Stories, which users can tap to see more details about a product.

The company began testing shopping in Stories back in June, and has rolled out the capability globally to businesses across 46 countries today.

The platform is also launching a dedicated shopping channel on Explore, the section on its app that curates personalized suggestions for channels based on users' individual interests and tastes. People looking to browse items for fun will now be able to see a channel dedicated to shopping posts from brands they follow or might like.

"Instagram is really well-positioned around discovery, but for a while there was no clear way from discovery to learning more about a product," Vishal Shah, director of product management at Instagram told Business Insider.

"These updates help bring discovery to consumers in a more powerful way and support the shopping journey, but not necessarily in a linear fashion."

Instagram is tapping into the 'shoppable communications' trend

With Instagram Stories now reaching 400 million people each day, marketers have been flocking to the format - producing both free and paid ad content. They'd like to use Stories to entice shopping - which has become an intrisic part of Instagram.

In fact, a third of the most-viewed stories come from businesses and brands, and more than 90 million accounts now tap to reveal tags in shopping posts on Instagram every month, according to the company.

"Instagram is tapping into 'shoppable communications,' the trend where e-commerce is moving toward becoming everywhere commerce," said Geoff Sheldon, vp of strategy at agency iCrossing.

"Consumer expectation is you should be able to purchase things whenever and wherever you want, with minimal clicks."

"Brands are seeing a much shorter consumer window from inspiration to conversion," said Kerry Perse, managing director of social at the agency OMD Create.

Facebook needs Instagram to keep shoppers - and Wall Street -happy

The expanded focus on shopping should be viewed as part of Instagram parent company Facebook's ongoing efforts to maximize profits elsewhere as the News Feed gets increasingly crowded, said an agency executive that wished to remain anonymous.

"Facebook has seen a shift in consumption from the News Feed to Instagram Stories, but not seen the ad revenue shift with it," said the executive. "Doing this is smart for their business as it brings the Stories format on a level playing field in terms of attribution with the News Feed."

Jeanne Bright, vp and head of social activation at Essence North America, agreed, saying brands were likely to invest more as they are being given more ways to measure impact.

"This update allows all retailers to take advantage of a huge, growing audience with Instagram Stories," she said. "Businesses that can show direct return on ad spend from Instagram are likely to invest even more with the channel."

Instagram is also making it easier for brands to close the deal with shoppers

Advertisers ranging from Madewell to Third Love to Chubbies and Kylie Cosmetics have been looking to sell more products via Instagram.

"Since we introduced Instagram shopping in feed last year, we've seen our demand from the channel more than double, and we expect to see similar results over time with the introduction of shopping in Stories," said Liz Cebron, vp of brand innovation at Madewell.

For Claudia Allwood, vp of brand marketing at skincare brand Tatcha, the wider rollout of the shopping tag is not only another step in the direction of offering consumers a seamless experience on Instagram, but will also help them tailor their content and products better to consumers.

"Anecdotally, we know that our Stories receive screenshots and shares - so this new feature makes it much easier for fans to get the details on products by removing a manual step from the process," she said.

Another example is Futurism Products, a publishing company that uses its audience and data to launch direct-to-consumer products, such as Gravity Blanket. The vast majority of the brand's online store traffic stems from mobile, and Instagram is already its second biggest source of social sales. Its president Mike Grillo expects the latest Instagram shopping updates to be tremendously impactful.

"The shop functionality within Stories will further remove friction and enable Instagram to be a more meaningful bottom-funnel, conversion-focused ad platform,'" he told Business Insider.