Instagram Shops brings your retail store online
If you’re a retail storefront and don’t sell online yet, Instagram Shops might be a good first step into ecommerce. Instagram Shops helps you utilize the effort and design you have already put into merchandising your storefront by making Instagram posts shoppable. If you’ve never sold anything online before, you can list a batch of initial products that you sell in your store, and sell them through your Instagram profile. You don’t have to list your entire inventory and can list your products with Facebook, if you don’t have a website. As you get comfortable operating an ecommerce channel, you can add more products and advertise your listings.
Instagram Shops give your business profile the ability to create “product tags,” which operate the same as when you tag another account in a a post, except linking to a product listing instead. These tags make your posts shoppable. This means that you can take a photograph of your retail store, featuring a product, then tag that product in your post, and Instagram users can make a purchase within the Instagram app.
Instagram Shops help you get started with ecommerce. If you already post on Instagram, you effectively are doing the same as you have been, just adding on the ability for people to purchase what you post. You can use product tags on image posts, Reels, and in captions. When someone clicks on the tag, they are brought to a listing page for the product, and they can make a purchase right on the Instagram app. Instagram even offers users the ability to save payment methods, so frequent shoppers can make one-click purchases.
The ability to make your Instagram posts shoppable makes your retail offering that much more robust. If you have a physical retail storefront, you get to be meticulous in merchandising. With Instagram, you get to showcase your work, your products, and use the medium to tell the story of your business in a way that lets customers engage beyond the walls of your store.
You can advertise shoppable posts as well, which amplifies your product listing’s reach to a relevant audience. If you’re an outdoors store selling a water bottle as your first product, you can boost that shoppable post into the newsfeeds of people who are near your retail store, who are interested in hiking. If you are a clothing boutique, you can target to people in your retail storefront’s area who follow the brands you sell on social media.
Shoppable posts and Instagram Shops merges the in depth merchandising of a retail storefront with the efficiency of a digital sales channel, enabling your business to potentially reach new customers by doing what you’re already doing. All you have to do is post about your business, and showcase the products that you sell. Tell a story about your business and inform customers about the intricacies of your wares. Once approved, you can set up Instagram Shops within a day, and scale as you become familiar with selling online.
