7 benefits of setting up an Instagram Shop

Alice Herman shares a quick overview of setting up an Instagram shop and its benefits.

Launched in 2019, Instagram Shop features are constantly being updated on the app UI to make a conducive customer user journey on the platform as per reports.

Introduction

One of the most trending social media platforms among the Millennials - Instagram, has been on the path to evolution & success since its inception.

Instagram is an aesthetically visual platform that has been up-to-date with its innovations & feature enhancements. These advancements have led to over a billion active monthly users and millions of active brands on the channel.

One such feature that has been emerging is Instagram Shop that is changing the social media landscape & its utility for e-commerce brands, influencers & more.

What is an Instagram Shop?

Instagram shop allows brands or business accounts to turn their Instagram posts into shoppable posts, allowing them to buy the products in real-time directly from these posts.

It is a feature that helps in
turning the point of inspiration into point of sale and shortens the buyer
journey making it quick, easy, and simple. Users develop an interest to
purchase through the product visuals they see on Instagram.

There are many benefits to setting up an Instagram Shop for any brand as listed below:

Benefits Of Setting Up An Instagram Shop

Easy Product Discoverability

It happens with all of us where when we come across a product that intrigues us on social media. However, there is no link or instruction as to where we can buy it and later we are unable to find the product anywhere else.

But with the Instagram shop, product discoverability becomes extremely easy for the users as they can click on the shoppable tags to explore the details and pricing of the products in real-time to make a purchase decision.

Authentic Advertising

Nowadays, consumers tend to trust authenticity & rely on user-generated content for making their online purchase decisions over any branded content.

To do so, you can build a more trustworthy shopping environment by integrating all relevant UGC posts with shoppable tags to set up an Instagram shop.

It will also help in providing a realistic picture of the products, how people are using it, its aesthetic details, and reviews. This, in turn, can help in building brand advocacy along with sales.

Visual Marketing lead to Sales

Visual marketing is the use of captivating images & videos to attract and engage the customers and lead them to conversions.

This tool seems to be like an avenue for new-age marketing. This is because visuals are known to be more engaging to the users. The reports suggest that 85% of the users are more likely to buy your products after watching a video.

With an Instagram shop, you can use visuals to create shoppable posts, and it can lead to increased sales.

Opportunity for Influencer Marketing

Setting up an Instagram shop provides an ideal opportunity to leverage Instagram influencer marketing. As earlier, influencer marketing was mainly focused on creating brand awareness and amplified exposure or reach.

Earlier, users came to know about your brand and a small portion of that engaged with your brand. But now you can integrate Instagram shop into the influencer marketing content to attempt driving sales directly with greater impact in terms of business results and sales.

Simpler, Quicker, & Shorter Buyer Journey

What is it that users get annoyed with when it comes to an online commerce environment? Lengthy, tiring, and complex buying & checkout processes.

Instagram shop now addresses this challenge by allowing users to buy the products quickly and simply with minimum clicks and time. Having a shorter buying journey with easy checkout attracts more leads and conversion opportunities addressing the issue of cart abandonment.

Ecommerce brands usually make huge investments in the optimization of checkout and buying process testing, but the Instagram shop helps you in that direction.

Increased Engagement & Sales

Now comes the most crucial and the primary objective purpose that Instagram shop serves for any brand, that is, increased user engagement and sales.

Every brand’s marketing strategy is aimed mainly towards growing sales & revenue. Converting Instagram posts into shoppable posts can help users to convert their intention to purchase into action instantly.

As when interested users click
on the shoppable posts, they get all the details about products, and the new
user interface opens with product details, descriptions, and other relevant
products that increase the engagement.

Also, having shoppable tags allow real-time buying to the users that otherwise would have required a lot of effort & time investment.

Overall Customer Experience

Eventually, the Instagram shop attempts to providing an optimum consumer experience to the users with updated and renewed features on the App UI.

Customer experience is extremely crucial in eCommerce as it relates directly to brand image & loyalty and the completion of the marketing funnel.

Also read: Instagram tests payment options within app UI

How To Setup An Instagram Shop

Here are two of the best solutions that you can leverage to set up an Instagram shop and reap the above-mentioned benefits for your brand.

Instagram’s Shoppable Posts

Instagram provides its shoppable posts feature for brands that you can use to set up an Instagram shop. For this, you need to have an Instagram business account and the page connected to Facebook.

You will need to tag the
products in a post and add a link to these posts to their respective checkout
pages. Also, you need to add the image(s) of the product, brief description,
product price, and checkout link.

There are, however, some limitations on how many products you can tag & how many posts you can create that affect the user experience & conversions.

Visual Commerce Platform

The 2nd option & one of the best options, in my opinion, is to use a visual commerce platform like Taggbox Commerce to create a Shoppable Instagram gallery on the website and sell the products through it. A visual commerce platform helps in turning social media visuals into shoppable posts and create a feed of it for users’ ease.

With a visual commerce
platform, you can collect all the posts from your Instagram account into a
feed, add shoppable tags to each post, provide product details and display it
as Instagram Shop.

Not just account posts, you can also collect & curate user-generated content related to your hashtags into a feed, get rights from users to repurpose their content, add shoppable tags to Rights approved posts, and display the shoppable feed on your website or create a separate URL.

Post this, you can just add the link in your Instagram bio and guide users to the shoppable wall.

You can promote the shoppable
wall link in your stories, feed, or other social media platforms. The visual commerce
tool also provides in-built analytics to
measure performance, as well.

Conclusion

In this digital age, consumers are looking for easy & superior online experiences. The Instagram shop attempts to do this by bringing the shop to the users instead of users trying to go to the shop.

This feature helps your brand leverage the power of social media in increasing brand awareness, engagement, and most importantly - conversion & sales.

Now that you know the benefits try it for yourself to see what potential it holds for your brand!

This article piece is authored by Alice Herman.