With consumers mostly staying indoors during the pandemic, shopping through online marketplaces like Instagram is the best way to buy presents for friends and loved ones. A user has the option to tap on products and ads featured on both their Instagram Stories and feeds through accounts they either follow or accounts that Instagram suggests based on their browsing activity. There's also the Shop tab on the app itself, where a user can search for pretty much anything to buy from various shops and brands.
Followed accounts—may they be celebrities that post sponsored content, official brands, or small businesses that set up shop on the app—can use their photos and videos that feature buyable items to entice a consumer. These posts may have a shopping bag icon attached to each purchasable item, and tapping an icon will reveal the product name and price. Tapping on the photo pulls up the product page and lets the buyer complete their purchase on either Instagram or the shop's website.
Apart from posts from followed accounts, buyable goods can appear on the Instagram feed through Reels, as well as ads from Instagram shop creator accounts generated by the platform based on your app activity. When shoppers view a creator's shop's profile, they can browse and buy things right on Instagram or on their official website. Similarly, Instagram Reels will have a 'View products' link at the bottom of the post, where a user can bookmark an item to save it to a wish list, view the product page, or pay and complete a purchase within the app or the shop's website.
Shop With Ease From Within Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories is yet another place on the platform where users can view shopping links posted by people they follow. Ads to shops and websites sometimes appear in-between Stories, based on a user's web browser activity outside the app. These will have product stickers that users can tap to make a purchase. Additionally, influencers, brands and business owners can host an Instagram Live on Stories and have products pinned to the bottom of their broadcast, which buyers can tap to add to their carts. Shoppers can immediately complete their purchases without exiting Instagram. This experience further amplifies the ease of in-app shopping on iOS or Android devices, especially during the holidays when physical stores are possibly overcrowded.
Instagram Shop is a new feature on the app—which can be accessed through the shopping bag icon at the bottom of the page, next to the Profile icon. This culls the platform for products and puts them in one easily accessible place where users can browse, discover, and purchase items directly from their preferred brands. They can also search for things using any keywords to yield shops that may carry what they want or things that are similar. Within the Shop tab, a buyer can quickly access offers, sales, product best-of lists, new releases and Live videos that'll have featured products for sale, among other things.
Instagram banks on users being visually captivated to shop. This is probably why the Shop tab feed is arranged much like the Explore tab, with a never-ending stream of beautiful and eye-catching photos. That paired with the ability to tap on the ever-present shopping bag icon from almost every nook and cranny of Instagram makes holiday shopping from home a less stressful and more enjoyable experience.
Source: Instagram