By Boost Social Media Managing Director
Elisha Fiorentino
Facebook reports tell us that 70% of online shoppers head straight to Instagram to discover products. Every month 130 million Instagrammers tap on a shopping post. 36% of USA Instagrammers consider shopping a hobby, so if only you had access to getting your products on your timeline.
If you are looking to boost your eCommerce sales, the integration of an Instagram shopping cart is hands down the best way to take your business to the next level. And lo and behold, your followers don’t even have to leave Instagram to shop your website. Facebook and Instagram had shopping features for a while, but Instagram’s capability was a little lacklustre. In the past year, Instagram has really upped their game in the features and shopping for eCommerce and introduced new features. eCommerce business can now feature products in Instagram stories and on the newsfeed.
Instagram has upped its game for eCommerce with cart integration
In the past, eCommerce was reliant on followers visiting their profile and clicking on the link in their bio so they could be transported to a landing or product page. It meant navigating away from Instagram and meant users would put shopping in the too hard basket, something to be left for later. Now Instagram users can purchase directly from your eCommerce site with a few taps and additional details, and straight back to scrolling their timeline. All that’s required from you is to ensure Instagram is set up correctly so your products are shoppable.
When your Instagram is set up for shopping, it will allow users to tap on and hover over products with your finger to see products and prices. It only takes a tap of the shoppable tag to display additional information about the product or purchase immediately.
How do I set up Instagram shopping?
To integrate an Instagram cart, you first need to have a Facebook account and set up a Facebook Product Catalogue which you’ll find the template to set it up under Facebook Settings. It can take a fair bit of work to upload all your products to the Facebook Catalogue because you’ll need to add prices, product descriptions and URLs so it can be quite time-consuming.
Before you can go ahead and link it to Instagram, you will need to wait for approval by Facebook and it may take 1-2 days or longer, or it may be ready in as little as an hour or two. It all depends on the Facebook gods and how busy they are. Use Facebook Business Manager to set up multiple catalogues or an eCommerce tool such as Shopify.
Once you get the thumbs up from Facebook that your product catalogue has been approved, then it’s time to start adding the shoppable tags on Instagram. (See, told you it was a lot of work, so if you’re time-poor and need help, simply give Boost Social a call). All you have to do is go to select a business in your Instagram settings and then choose shopping. Select the Facebook catalogue you selected and then you’re set to add shopping tags to your posts.
For more help on Instagram shopping, call the social media managers who know how to boost your brand.
