Instagram Shopping: Is it Your Future?

Here’s a life hack for ecommerce merchants, and a cool development you won’t want to miss.

Instagram.

No, not the standard app you’ve been playing around with for a while, deciding whether it’s of value to you as an online seller. After all, it’s so, so graphical. Maybe too graphical. And personal. Isn’t this what millennials use to share selfies?

Not anymore. With the lion’s share of social media apps hungry to gain attention from businesses, Instagram has been paying apt attention. The ever-popular feature Instagram Stories quietly morphed into a tool for ecommerce in the fall of 2017, allowing businesses to tag product photos through “stickers” on their posts. Those stickers are active links to your site.

And in June of 2018, Instagram took to the video platform with IGTV, an app designed to animate social and business parallels.

It’s gone so well that Instagram is reported to be launching an app tailored for you, the merchant. And experienced users will get the hang of it in no time flat.
​
Consider this: More than 25 million businesses have existing Instagram accounts. Of those, 2 million are advertisers. The foundation is set for sales, and they have been happening. If you feel like you’re missing a golden opportunity, you may be right.

The numbers are in, somewhat. A recent survey showed that brands have reported an increase in site traffic of more than 1400 percent and a whopping 20 percent gain in sales. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
​
To no one’s surprise, potential hasn’t escaped third-party app developers. Ecommerce site Ecwid rolled out a transition app on its own. It’s pretty interesting. But conventional wisdom says they anticipated Instagram would seize on the opportunity to rebrand their name, and it appears they will.

Already kicking around the idea of a semi-independent messaging app, Instagram has upped its game. Smart sellers go to where the buyers are. Instagram understood this and has adapted quickly. Here is a segue to the mega-platform’s plans.

Because most online businesses already have Instagram accounts, it only makes sense to venture into semi-direct selling. And what better way to do that than a platform built around imagery? Unlike the current feature accommodating tagged navigation to promoted products, “IG Shopping” – as it’s said to be called – will function as a fully standalone app. The good news for you? That means those who download it intend to use it. They are shopaholics.
 
Hang tight while Instagram rolls out what could be a revolutionary transformation of what was a somewhat limited, branded venue. And listen to experts who have their fingers on the pulse of this growing company. They predict that with these upgrades, Instagram will seriously cut into the base of social media giant Facebook. Here are two other developments they see coming:

• Instagram will slowly but surely roll back the volume of tagged shopping content on its regular feed, transitioning to an interface it had from the start; and
  
  
• The little guy wins! Making behemoth ecommerce players such as Shopify sweat, most believe this will raise the profile of small sellers and DIYers, effectively chipping away at their relevance and making Instagram what it was designed to be – a social app.
  
  

 
It’s anyone’s guess how a devoted shopping app on Instagram will change the landscape of ecommerce. But one thing is for sure, and that is you need to be looking into it. What have you to lose, besides business?