A year after launching in the U.S. Instagram opens up its shopping feature to 8 more countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.
For Instagram, in-app shopping was always the way to go. The once funky photo-sharing app took its time to grow since its &q billion acquisition by Facebook. Today, with video, Stories and a solid ad offering, the app has become a major platform for brands, publishers and celebrities. More importantly, Instagram has grown to be the leading platform for some of the strongest e-com verticals: fashion and travel.
Instagram started testing shoppable posts back in November 2016, before it rolled out the feature to merchants within the U.S. in 2017. Today, exactly a year on, the company is opening its shopping capabilities to 8 more markets. The game is on.
Shoppable posts are more than just a buy button. The feature enables brands to tag products within their organic posts with information such as product details, pricing, and links to their websites where users can complete their purchases.
Early February of this year, Snapchat introduced its own in-app store. Although Instagram’s shoppable posts do not allow users to directly buy from the app, the feature has shown to drastically increase e-com traffic and online orders. For example, Lulus VP of marketing, Noelle Sadler, explained how rolling out Instagram Shopping on their account could be directly attributed to over 100,000 sessions and 1,200 orders on their website.
For businesses in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K., tagging a product is now as simple as tagging a person in a post. What next?
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