If you sell products and have an instagram account, there’s never been a better time than now to set up for Instagram Shopping. Why? People have time and people
I don’t know about you but I’ve found myself often scrolling an instagram feed late at night drooling over items such as earrings, clothing and more.
Setting up to sell on Instagram shopping is relatively easily and the feature is available in both your Instagram feed and Instagram stories. However you must meet some criteria in order to be eligible. This includes:
- Primarily selling physical goods – Your Instagram account must be a business that primarily sells physical goods. Facebook (owner of Instagram) is continuing to test this feature and hope to expand availability to more accounts in the near future.
- Have your business account connected to a Facebook Catalog.… Your business account must be connected to a Facebook catalog inside Facebook Business Manager. This can be created and managed on Catalog Manager or Business Manager on Facebook, or through Shopify or BigCommerce platforms.
Once you have this all linked up, you’re ready to sell!
HOW IT LOOKS TO INSTAGRAM SHOPPERS
People who follow you will see your shopping feed posts and stories, just like they would see any organic content.
For feed, people will see a shopping bag icon in the corner of your posts. When they tap, they will see product tags with the name and price of your items. By tapping on the tag, people will then see a product description page to learn more about the item and make a purchase if interested.
You can also tag your products on your Stories, (a daily destination for 500 million people globally). Think about stories as opening the door into the business – telling the story behind creating your product. A very cool feature is that you can update the colorus of your product stickers in Stories to be in line with your brand style.
Search and Explore: With shopping on Instagram, you can reach a totally new audience. Whenever you create a Shopping post, your post may be shared on Search and Explore, where more than 200 million people visit daily — it’s the tab with the magnifying glass in the app.
Instagram has also added a shop tab within Search and Explore so people can just look through shopping posts, rather than looking at just photos and videos.
Shop tab: Remember that 2/3 of profile visits are from people who are not following a business, so this shop tab is a great opportunity. Both of these are surfaces people with high intent to shop are likely to visit.
Use Shopping on Instagram so that people can easily discover your business and product offerings, even if they aren’t your followers today.
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In addition to placing your products front and center, you can also sell your services on Instagram (ties into the product update we talked through earlier)
Your customers can book an appointment directly from your Instagram Business Account, like to reserve a table or book a salon appointment. This button is available to all businesses that have an account with one of our booking platform partners.
-Add a button on your Instagram Business Account to allow people to book your services, directly on Instagram.
-Use feed posts and stories to let people know they can book, reserve or schedule your services directly on your Business Account.
You can call attention to the book button in your Stories and posts to get more bookings.
About Call-To-Action Buttons for Instagram Business Profiles
While any business can access these features, at this time we have a limited number of providers for these action buttons. We hope to continue to expand this list over time to cover partners across all countries. Learn more about… where these features are available. Keep in mind that you need an existing account with a partner to select them. You can go to the partner’s website to learn more.
You can add the following call-to-action buttons to your business account on Instagram:
- Book: Book an appointment.
- Reserve: Make a reservations at a restaurant.
- Get Tickets:… Get tickets for an event.
- Gift Cards:… Buy gift cards for a business.
- Order Food:… Get food delivery or take-out from a business.
Only one action button can be displayed on your profile at a time.
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Link: https://business.instagram.com/success/chinese-laundry/
Link: https://business.instagram.com/success/vita-coco/
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To use Instagram Shopping, your Instagram account and business must fulfill the following requirements:
- Comply with our merchant agreement and commerce policies.… Your business must comply with our… merchant agreement… and… commerce policies.
- Have an Instagram business account.… Your Instagram account must be converted into a business account.
- Have a connected Facebook Page.… Your Instagram business profile must be connected to a Facebook Page. Facebook Pages with the Message to Buy payment option will need to delete and create a new Shop with another payment option before they can use Instagram Shopping. Please note that country or age restrictions on your Facebook Page will not carry over to your Instagram account.
Once you fulfill the above requirements, your can submit your account for review. Go to your profile’s settings, tap… Business… and tap… Instagram Shopping. Follow the steps to make sure everything is all good to go and submit your account for review. Usually the process takes a few days, but sometimes it can take longer.
If you’ve been approved, you will receive notifications from Instagram and complete set-up in Shopping in Settings to start tagging products in your posts and stories. You can visit Shopping in Settings at any time to check your review status.
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