These days you may have realized that the sea currents are changing direction more and more, pushing you toward the new land of Instagram Shopping.
You’re in luck because today I’m going to explain what it is, how to activate it, and why it’s important to your business.
Shopping on Instagram in fact offers your ship a showcase where people can explore your best goods: you can share featured products via organic posts and stories, or have adventurers discover your loot in the Shops section.
What is Instagram Shopping
With Shopping on Instagram or Shops on Instagram you can create a custom digital store on your company profile. In short, a ship overflowing with goods that can travel all over the world!
We know how important every step of theuser experience via mobile and how annoying it is to have interruptions, it’s often like sailing through sirens or a storm!
Therefore, this storefront allows online adventurers to learn about your products and purchase them in just a few steps, in a journey that is anything but complicated.
Customers can also visit your shop by pressing the button Display shop on your profile or find it thanks to Search in Shopping.
When they click on the a product tag in the post, a product sticker in your story or the product itself in the Shopping section, they will be directed to a page containing the description of the product in which they will be able to see:
- pictures of the product;
- a description of the product;
- the cost of the product;
- a link that directs directly to your website, where the product can be purchased.
It thus becomes an indispensable feature for those who own a eCommerce. In fact, having an online shop on your business Instagram profile gives you numerous benefits, such as:
- the possibility to add all the products you want in the online shop;
- ensuring a better user experience, increasing sales;
- easy and immediate item sponsorship;
- better communication.
By a thousand whales, what are we waiting for? It’s time to set sail and start this adventure together too!
Activate your Instagram shop in 5 steps
Before activating the Shop you’ll have to be very careful because, despite being a captain who doesn’t take orders, this time you’ll have to respect some eligibility requirements and follow a few steps.
- Verify you meet all the requirements
- Build a business Instagram profile
- Connect Instagram to Facebook
- Create and link to your product catalog
- Apply for Instagram Shopping
Verify you meet all requirements
First, your company must be located in a supported market and sell only physical goodsnot services, which are eligible for sale.
Therefore, if you are in the business of restoring ships you may not have your own online shop, but you could sell the parts!
Finally, your Facebook page should not contain any age or country restrictions.
Once you’ve checked that you comply with the sales regulations and theagreement with the merchant we can move on.
Make a business Instagram profile
If you already have a business profile all you have to do is hoist the sails and move on to the next step.
If not, you’ll have to change course for a moment, but don’t worry because… switching to a business profile on Instagram it’s that easy!
After you make it continue on this page of my logbook, I’ll be waiting for you here.
Link Instagram to Facebook
Once you’ve activated your company profile you need to connect it to the Facebook Page.
For all the buccaneers! I hope you already have it because if you don’t, you’ll need to get it hooked up right away.
So far the journey has been simple, now the real adventure begins! Are you ready?
Create and link to your product catalog
To activate the shop it is very important to have created a Facebook cataloguewhich is the container that groups the information On any items you want to advertise or sell on Facebook and Instagram.
Therefore you must have and be an administrator of a Active Business Manager linked to your company page.
Through Catalog management You can select an existing catalog or create a new one and link it to your Instagram Business account. If you select an existing catalog a shop will be created automatically, you can customize it or publish it as it is.
Keep in mind that you can only select one catalog to use with your account and you can’t change it anymore. Be careful not to step over your (wooden) leg!
However, if the catalog configuration discourages you you can decide to use a partner platform such as Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce to import items into your catalog faster.
Now that you’ve created your catalog, you can upload your merchandise! As you may notice, Facebook allows you to upload products in four ways:
- Manually – as is also the case with the storefront;
- through importing a list of data – i.e. a csv, TSV or XML file to upload multiple items;
- linking it to a Facebook Pixel – to import and update articles automatically from your website.
Finally, with Sales Manager In addition to managing inventory, adding and removing products from the catalog, you can also:
- configure shops, categories, and create collections – foregrounding the products you want to highlight.
- customize the shop – changing the size of text, links and buttons and choosing the color and appearance of collections.
- promote the shop – creating advertisements to promote the shop.
In short, it will be like your helm, a trusted tool through which you can manage sales, choosing where you want customers to complete their purchase (on your website or with a direct message) and accessing different settings.
Enabling Instagram Shopping
Once your account and catalog are connected, log in to the Instagram app to do the activation request to Instagram Shopping.
Access the Settings of your profile, tap Company and finally Configure Shopping on Instagram.
Usually the process takes a few days of browsing, but sometimes it can take longer!
Once you’ve been approved, you’ll receive notifications from Instagram and will need to complete the setup in the Shopping present in Settings.
You just have to use your new feature: you can tag products in posts by simply clicking on Tag products and create Stories to which you can add a sticker with links to the product.
Your ship can finally reach more adventurers and be featured in the Shopping section!
