A Full Guide on Instagram Shopping

Instagram shopping statistics shows that:

• 83% of users discover new services and products on the platform.
• 81% do their research to find products or services.
• 80% decide if they want to buy a service or a product right from the Instagram platform.

These display how popular eCommerce is on Instagram.

If you’re in eCommerce, you can’t do without Instagram these days. Instagram has numerous advanced shopping options to boost sales and expose your brand. These options and ways to sell on Instagram in 2023 are what this article is about.

?Suggested read: Grow Your eCommerce Instagram Account with Combin

Instagram Shopping is an eCommerce ecosystem within Instagram that lets you browse, save to a wishlist, and buy products on the platform. Businesses can post their products with price tags and descriptions, sell them right on Instagram within a Shop, or lead customers to their website store.

Brands and even creators can tag products in their posts and stories to let people seamlessly discover them and shop without leaving Instagram.

Just a couple of years ago, Instagram shopping capabilities were limited with feed tagged posts and a shop on the brand’s profile page. Instagram has been expanding shopping features ever since, and now you can find tagged shoppable content in feeds, stories, creator’s posts, live streams, Reels, and more ?

Instagram Shops

Instagram Shops can be found on the main profile page of a brand, right below the bio – View Shop button. Instagram Shops can aid you in reaching new customers, gaining more website traffic, and increasing sales. Simply put, this should be the main asset of any brand on Instagram.

If you set up your Instagram Shop, you let your followers save products to a wishlist right on Instagram, find items that are on sale, find more details about the item (discover its description), message right to the seller upon additional questions, see prices, find it on your website store, sort and filter the items by various parameters (size, colour, etc), and more.

Besides, your tagged shoppable items can get on the Explore Page.

?Suggested read: 5 Tools to Use with Instagram to Boost Your eCommerce in 2022

Below, we’ll tell you how to set up the Instagram Shop. Now let’s delve into more options where your tagged products can be discovered.

Instagram Feed Post Shopping

Feed shoppable posts were the first Instagram Shopping feature available. To this day, it’s one of the simplest ways to discover shoppable items on Instagram. When you set up your Instagram Shop, you can tag up to 5 products in one feed post and 20 items in a carousel.

Instagram Live Shopping

Beyond feed posts, Instagram allows brands to sell during live streams. Live broadcast shopping lets you showcase your products, answer all customers’ questions in real time, and sell items directly from the stream. Yes, it’s pretty similar to good old TV ads.

If you have access to Instagram Checkout, you can tag up to 30 products from your Shop before going live. Then, during the live stream, you can pin products so that your viewers can seamlessly purchase them.

Instagram Shopping via Guides

Guides on Instagram are not as popular as Live streams or Reels, yet they allow you to sell items as well. For example, if you want to categorise your items, present new ones, or make a roundup of your best-selling products, you can create a Guide with these items.

Instagram Shopping from Creators

Influencers are a powerful asset that every marketer should leverage. They had this power before the shopping from creators was available on Instagram, and it has been multiplied: now creators can bring direct traffic to your Shop and increase sales on the platform. How? Creators tag your products in posts, and their followers go right to your Shop to browse them.

No more questions in comments about what this creator is wearing in the post!

Instagram Stories Shopping

Shoppable stories have been accessible for quite a time and released together with feed shoppable posts. You can tag your Shop items with a special product sticker in stories, by clicking on which viewers can visit your Shop and purchase the item.

Instagram Reels Shopping

Reels are growing exponentially on Instagram, so it was a matter of time before Instagram was going to launch Reels Shopping. Initially, you could only add your items in the Reel description; now, you can tag them directly in your video. Reels viewers just need to swipe them up and browse the product in your Shop.

?Suggested read: Instagram Reels Ads: Everything You Need to Know

All these shopping options aren’t available until you set up an Instagram Shop.

Here’s how you can do exactly that.

First, make sure you can sell on Instagram at all.

Instagram Shopping Requirements

1. Your products have to correspond with the Facebook guidelines, meaning that goods of a certain character cannot be sold on Instagram: alcohol, tobacco, adult products or services, healthcare products, and others. The full list of prohibited items can be found here.

2. Your business must comply with the Instagram merchant agreement.

3. Your Instagram account has to be a Business account.

4. Your Business account has to be connected to a relevant Facebook Page.

5. Your Instagram Business account has to be connected to a Facebook Catalogue (we’ll talk about it below).

6. Your country has to be among those where Instagram shopping is available. The list of available markets is here.

So, you comply with all the requirements above. What’s next?

Step 1. Create a Facebook Catalogue.

First of all, you need to connect your Business account to a Facebook Catalogue. Facebook Catalogue is a collection of all the products you sell and can be used not only for creating shoppable Instagram posts but also for creating ads and other things.

1. Open Business Manager ->Catalogue Manager -> Create Catalogue.

2. Choose the type of your catalogue: E-commerce, Travel, Property, or Auto.

3. Once you’ve chosen, press Next.

4. Configure your catalogue settings.

Fill in the form you see on your screen. Choose a relevant Facebook Page and pick a name for your catalogue.

When you’re catalogue is ready, you can view it and keep on setting it up. If your main goal is creating shoppable posts, we suggest you should go right to Products, then press Add Products.

You can add them manually if there are less than 50 items you want to sell or use the data feed when you have more than 50 products.

6. After you choose what suits you more, you need to fill in the information about your product.

Upload an image of at least 600 x 600 pixels, choose the product name, its description, a website link and a price in any currency.

Once you’re ready, press Add Product.

Step 2. Connect the catalogue to your Instagram page.

Now your catalogue is ready. The next necessary thing is to connect it with your Instagram profile.

Head over to Settings -> Connected Instagram Business profiles -> Manage Profiles.

Step 3. Wait for Instagram’s approval.

Submit your account for review. The review process usually takes a couple of days.

Step 4. Sign up for Instagram Shopping within the native app.

Congrats! Your profile is approved, and you received a notification. What you should do next is to complete the setup process right within Instagram.

Go to Settings ->Business -> Shopping. Then select a product catalogue to connect it with your Instagram page.

Step 5. Share your shoppable content.

To create a shoppable post, do as you usually do: pick an image, write a caption, place a location, etc., and this time, don’t forget to tag products. To do so, press Tag Products, type in the name of products you want to tag and select the relevant ones from the appeared list.

As for stories, a shoppable sticker will help you here. You can apply these stickers to any stories, no matter if these are images or videos.

Once you choose the sticker, you will again see the list of your products. Choose the product, edit and share your Story. This feature is actually even better than the “Swipe Up” one because, for the former, your account followers count can’t be less than 10,000.

Step 6. Track the performance.

Use Instagram in-app analytics or tools like Combin Growth to see how your content works. Track your content performance and change the strategy as you feel like.

Does Instagram Shopping Have an App?

It doesn’t. You can sell and purchase within the native Instagram application.

Instagram Shopping Ads

Instagram launched Shopping ads in summer 2021. These ads appear as tiles on the Instagram Shop tab home page. Clicking on the ad will bring you to the Product Details Page, where you can learn more about the item, view additional imagery, and browse additional products from the brand. You can also save the product to your wishlist or share it with friends. You can also hide or report the ad, too.

Ads will be rolling out in countries where Instagram Shop tab is available. Here’s how to run Instagram Shopping ads.

As you see, mastering Instagram eCommerce is not rocket science. There are challenges if your business is beyond the markets where Instagram Shopping is available. But if it’s not, it’s pretty easy to set up Instagram Shopping and get the most out of your Instagram page. And with tools like Combin Growth, it’s even more effortless.