Instagram’s New eCommerce Feature for In-App Purchases
With each passing day, Instagram is becoming an increasingly powerful and important tool for advertisers, marketers, and retailers. Buyers, sellers, and advertisers alike are clinging to the Facebook-owned app, which has amassed an average of 1 billion monthly users.
25 million business have profiles on Instagram. 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business. You do the math.
With its new feature, users can make purchases within the app, instead of having to be navigated to an external site.
For some time now, businesses have been able to advertise on the app via carousel ad posts and sponsored posts that include a link to the site, or by instructing users to “swipe up” on stories. While these capabilities have been hugely successful for all involved in the process, Instagram has taken it to the next step.
With its new feature, users can make purchases within the app, instead of having to be navigated to an external site. You have seconds to capture a user’s attention – if it takes too long or requires too much effort, you’ve lost a potential customer. Now, users can make a purchase an item within seconds of first seeing it by clicking tags embedded within the photo/post, without ever having to exit the app. It’s completely effortless.
60% of Instagram users have discovered new products on the app, and 75% of users take action after visiting a post (Instagram). By shortening the path to purchase so seamlessly and significantly, Instagram is turning discovery into action and impulse into purchase at a new rate.
This feature also applies to stories. With 400 million active users viewing stories every day, “stories” often engage the most viewers on the app. While stories have always been a great method to gain exposure and direct users to a site, many businesses have been hesitant to invest in stories due to their limited ability to actually sell a product on-site (no pun intended). Enabling customers to make a purchase directly from stories gives brands more of a reason to invest in creating intriguing content for them.
Whether you are buying, selling, or advertising, you can rest assured that this new feature means good things for you.
