How to set up Instagram Shopping for your eCommerce Business

Instagram has become one of the largest social platforms of 2018 and with nearly 500 million daily active users it is a platform you need you be using to promote your eCommerce business. On average brands see 10x higher engagement rates on Instagram than Facebook - so the new Instagram Shopping feature has become a revolution in the social media marketing world. 60% of users learn about new products through Instagram and 30% of users say they’ve bought a product they have discovered on Instagram.

What is Instagram Shopping?

Instagram shopping allows you to tag products from your Facebook shopping feed onto the photos that you post onto your Instagram feed & stories. You can link the feeds by linking your Instagram business profile to your Facebook page.

Instagram Shopping is only available on mobile devices but Instagram Story links can be accessed on desktop & mobile devices

Am I eligible for Instagram Shopping?

To qualify for the Instagram Shopping feature you need to meet the following criteria:

• Be a page admin on your Facebook page
• Have a product feed set up on your Facebook page
• Have the latest version of the Instagram App
• Enable your Instagram profile to be a business account
• Link your Facebook page to your Instagram account
• Sell physical products (not services)

How do I set up Instagram Shopping?

How do I tag products?

Once you have linked your Facebook shopping feed and have approval from Instagram you will be able to go to your settings and click “Products”. This will then let you select the product feed you want to use.

To tag products on photos already posted:

1. Select the photo you want to tag a product on
2. Click edit
3. Click “Tag Product” - this should look the same as the option to tag people
4. Type the name of the product into the feed and select it

To tag products on a new photo:

1. Select the photo you want to post
2. Apply any filters you wish to use
3. Add a caption / tag a location / tag a product

(You can only tag products or people in a photo - you can’t tag both)

What if I’m not eligible for Instagram Shopping?

If you don’t meet the requirements for Instagram Shopping, then there is an alternative. You can still add links to your Instagram stories, but you will need to:

• Update your Instagram profile to a business account

• Be verified on Instagram OR have over 10k followers

What are the benefits of Instagram Shopping?

Instagram Shopping through product tags allows customers to shop your products directly from the Instagram App or save it into a collection. Saving a product to a shopping collection can be really beneficial to your business as it allows customers to save items for easy access in the future, therefore increasing engagement.

For bonus points, once you have gained more than 10,000 followers (or have a verified account) you can add trackable links into your Instagram Stories. This means you can directly track how much income you are making through Google Analytics. To create a trackable link you can use the Google Campaign URL Builder to personalise your link (add ‘Instagram’ to the source section and ‘Story’ the medium section). This means in Google Analytics any clicks on your Story links will come through when you search ‘source/medium’ as ‘Instagram/Story’.

References:

Ana Gotter, 19.09.18. The 30 Instagram Statistics You Need to Know in 2018. Retrieved from https://adespresso.com/blog/instagram-statistics/