61% of social media users turn to Instagram for product discovery, making it an extremely powerful platform for your brand to reach engaged shoppers.
However, discovering your product is just the first step. After that, it’s time for them to buy it. If the process is too long or complicated, shoppers may lose interest before completing the purchase.
That’s where Instagram Checkout comes in.
This feature allows your business to sell products directly within Instagram, making the path from discovery to purchase faster and more convenient.
In this article, we’ll explain how Instagram Checkout works and how it benefits your social media marketing and online sales.
How Instagram Checkout Simplifies The Multi-Step Shopping Process
If your business isn’t using the Instagram Checkout feature, the shopping journey for users looking at your products on the platform is a lengthy multi-step marketing funnel that looks like this:
- User taps the product tag on Instagram and is redirected to your website via link in bio or story
- Waits for your website to load
- Navigates through the site to find the product they saw on Instagram
- Completes a traditional checkout process
This extended process can cause users to lose interest or abandon their purchase before completing the checkout.
Instagram Checkout disrupts this dynamic, addressing all these pain points, and cuts the process to a simple two-step checkout procedure:
- Users need to click on a shoppable tag on an Instagram post
- They select product specifications and quantity, and hit the checkout button on Instagram to place their order
How To Enable Instagram Checkout?
With this feature making the shopping experience faster and more convenient for users, setting it up can have a significant impact on your sales. To enable Instagram Checkout for your business, follow these five steps:
- Confirm eligibility: The first step to setting up Instagram Checkout involves confirming that your business meets Instagram’s commerce policies and is located in a supported market. Allowed products include physical goods such as clothes, beauty items, home decorations, art and more. Instagram also allows sale of digital products such as eBooks and online courses.
- Ensure your Instagram profile is set to a Business account: To sell products directly on Instagram, your account has to be set to a Business account. You can do this by tapping the Edit profile button, selecting Switch to Professional Account and choosing Business.
- Link it to a Facebook product catalog: Instagram runs its Checkout feature through a double-checking feature via Facebook’s Business Manager, meaning that your account has to be connected to your Facebook Business page.
- Wait for Instagram’s approval: Once the approval arrives, you can start setting up your Instagram shop.
- Link it with Instagram Shopping From Creators: This feature enables influencers to tag your products in their posts.
Once you set up Checkout on Instagram, you can start posting photos of your products. Small shopping icons will appear as overlays, indicating which products are available for sale and allowing users to view product details and make a purchase directly within the app.
Another thin you can do is link your shop with Instagram Shopping From Creators. This feature allows influences and content creators who promote your products to include shoppable tags in their posts, making it possible for their followers to purchase items directly through their content.
Instagram Checkout is currently available in 20+ countries including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, France and Australia.
Benefits Of Instagram Checkout For Businesses
The global cart abandonment rate is 70.19%, which means that the majority of potential purchases are lost before the checkout is completed. One of the most common reasons for this is a complicated or length checkout process.
Making a purchase online becomes even more frustrating when users are redirected from social media to external websites, which can lead to longer load times and inconsistent user experiences.
By setting up the Checkout feature on Instagram, your business can streamline the purchasing process by allowing customers to complete their transactions directly within the app.
Enabling Instagram Checkout and making shopping easier comes with numerous benefits, including:
- Increased conversion rates: By keeping users within the app, Checkout reduces friction in the buying process and turns interest into sales more quickly.
- Enhanced user interaction: Shoppable posts and product tags make it easy for users to discover and interact with products directly.
- Boosted brand trust: Instagram users trust stores on Instagram as the platform verifies that product images and descriptions are accurate.
- Access to in-app promotions: Eligible businesses have access to Instagram-exclusive promotions that can drive more visibility and increase sales.
- Performance tracking: Instagram also offers metrics on product performance that can guide smarter marketing and inventory decisions for businesses.
Overall, Instagram Checkout simplifies the path to purchase and helps you capture more sales with less effort. By meeting customers where they already are, you create a simple and engaging shopping experience that aligns with their browsing habits and expectations.
Best Practices For Utilizing Instagram Checkout
Setting up your Instagram store is the first step to selling products on the platform. To truly maximize its potential, you have to employ the best strategies for enhancing visibility, driving engagement and encouraging conversions:
- Optimize visual content: High-quality and eye-catching images of your product in real-life settings can help customers visualize their use and value.
- Leverage product tags: By tagging your products in posts, stories and reels, you keep your audience engaged and make your posts easier to access.
- Post regularly: To keep your products top of mind, you need a consistent posting schedule that aligns with the platform’s peak times.
- Engage with your audience: Responding to comments, encouraging conversations and using interactive features to increase brand trust and further promote your products.
- Promote with ads: Utilize Instagram Ads to target specific demographics and amplify the reach of your shoppable content.
- Maintain good account health: To maximize your sales opportunities, ensure your account meets all requirements for a great customer experience.
It takes a thoughtful approach to turn Instagram Checkout into a sales tool that not only showcases your products but also drives more sales. If you make the right moves, this feature can blend into your customer journey and become a key part of your growth strategy.
How Direct Checkout Advances Instagram Shopping Experience
Instagram’s estimated revenue for 2020 was $24 billion.
But, more than profits for their creators – why does Instagram Checkout matter for the average user?
According to Facebook’s report, 87% of surveyed people take action after seeing product information on Instagram.
Furthermore, over 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile per day, and how 80% of the platform’s users have bought something off the platform.
- Promoting products directly: this feature allows brands and sellers to advertise their products to a potential audience of roughly 1 billion users, making shopping a seamless, frustration and friction-free maneuver. This very much falls into Instagram’s unique advantage as a marketplace: namely, it capitalizes on desire, not intent.
- Exposes products to users with an impulsive purchase intent: Intent-marketing is what algorithms like Google, Bing and even Facebook encouraged in recent years. This type of marketing appeals to the conscious, rational mind and aims at buyers’ intent. However, Instagram’s position as a mirror for the life users want to live triggers desire in the subconscious mind which translates into impulsive purchasing.
Social Media Checkouts: Instagram’s Competitors
With its Checkout feature, Instagram as a social media platform is branching out to other digital industries and thus gaining more competitors than just social media giants.
1. Pinterest
Facebook’s and Instagram’s biggest competitor in social shopping may turn out to be Pinterest. Many Pinterest users use the platform exclusively for discovering things to buy.
Pinterest already offers retailers Shopping Ads (as does Facebook), which provide users with details about items and then send them to a checkout page on the retailer’s website.
Developing a more seamless checkout process like Instagram Checkout could help Pinterest increase the value of those ads through higher conversions and increased engagement.
2. Snap
Snap has been trying to edge its way into social shopping by using advanced camera and image recognition capabilities.
It partnered with Amazon in 2018 to offer visual search capabilities within its app, sending users to Amazon’s marketplace whenever they Snap an item they’re interested in buying.
Pinterest offers a similar feature, as does Amazon’s app.
3. Google
Google is currently giving an AI upgrade to its Collections feature — basically, Google’s own take on Pinterest, but built into Google Search.
Collections feature that launched in 2018 lets users save any type of search results – images, bookmarks or map locations – for later use, into groups called “Collections.”
Google Shopping is getting a redesign with several new features, including options to shop local stores, track prices and even find style inspiration through Google Lens.
Already, Google Lens’ smart image recognition technology can help identify objects, translate text and find similar items.
Using a photo of an outfit a user likes – for instance, something you found on Instagram – Google Lens will be able to pull up other “style ideas” from around the web.
Takeaways On Instagram Checkout
It is safe to say that Instagram Checkout will impact and change the following industries:
- eCommerce
- Advertising
- Payable services
- Social media
This feature will inevitably change the users’ landscape as well, as Instagram already helps the majority of people make informed decisions when purchasing online.
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