The entire shopping journey—all in one place. Instagram Checkout makes it quick, easy and secure for people to buy products they find on Instagram, without leaving the app.
The shop icon is an entry point for people to buy directly from your Instagram profile. Your Instagram Shop page features all products from your catalog that you’ve tagged in feed or stories.
Instagram's Explore tab is an additional discovery path for your shoppable posts. After connecting your catalog to Instagram, you can begin adding shopping tags to posts and stories. Your tagged media can be featured in Explore for Instagram's audience to discover.
Implement these best practices to optimize your Instagram Shop.
When uploading to catalog, present your products as they're shown on your website. Avoid cropping or resizing images for Instagram, and ensure products are centered and clearly visible against clean backgrounds.
Add multiple product images to give people a clearer idea of what your product looks like. Consider showing different product angles, color variants, model sizes or skin tones.
Outdoor Voices uses media carousels to feature models of different skin tones and sizes. They also highlight unique product features to help drive consideration.
When uploading to catalog, video is helpful to show movement, if that’s important for the product (e.g. a makeup tutorial or a flowy dress).
Tanya Taylor uses video to highlight the movement and flexibility of her dresses, with close-up shots of her floral patterns.
Posts tagged by creators will auto-populate into your product details pages. By collaborating with creators who align with your brand, you can help increase the visibility of your shop and broaden the diversity of your product imagery.
Anastasia Beverly Hills creates vibrant product pages by utilizing multiple formats and leveraging creators to tag their products.
Update your catalog with accurate inventory counts and product category codes.
Ensure product names are concise and consistent with your website.
When uploading a product to your catalog, write a description of the item, including length, materials, cut and size considerations. For non-US sizes, remember to include size conversions.
Make sure size details are clear. If a product is offered in multiple sizes, ensure you have inventory for each size.
You can set different types of ship fees, including free shipping minimums at different service levels. Set your shipping options in Commerce Manager settings.
Make sure prices are accurate and consistent with your website.
Follow these creative best practices to drive consideration of your products.
Developing content and creative that helps inform your followers about the products they are shopping makes purchase decisions that much easier. 3 ways to encourage your customers to purchase.
Try on the product and provide styling tips
Address sizing and fit
Use the questions feature in stories to generate questions your customers have
Aimee Song of @songofstyle uses Instagram stories to encourage questions, offer sizing advice, and give personal styling tips. These techniques help potential customers feel comfortable about making a purchase.
Pin the most frequently asked questions in stories to your highlights. It's an easy way to help your audience find the answers they need.
Instagram is at the intersection of community and culture—and the best marketing strategies leverage both. Follow these tips to maximize impact and drive sales with Checkout.
Identify cultural moments that matter to your brand and audience, then create shopping content relevant to those moments.
On Draft Day, the NFL posted media of players in their new teams' hats as draft picks were announced. Followers were able to celebrate their team's picks by buying these special edition hats to commemorate this exciting moment.
The NFL used simple but strong CTAs in the caption to drive urgency without distracting from the cultural moment itself.
Aligning with a cultural moment relevant to your brand or product can reach audiences in an authentic way and drive incremental sales.
With the collaboration tool, creators can tag specific products on Instagram, allowing people to shop inspiring looks without leaving the app.
Branded content can:
Tap into culture
Drive discovery with new audiences
Inspire people to shop
To make the most of their existing partnerships, Revolve brought 80 creators to Mexico to collaborate on shoppable brand content. Revolve was able to deploy this content throughout their campaign, maintaining a steady flow of shoppable branded content.
Revolve brought 80 influencers on a summer getaway for #RevolveSummer to create content and drive discovery for their brand.
— Elisa Kosonen Aritzia Senior Manager, Social Media
Align with creators relevant to your brand or product to drive incremental sales.
• Education is key
Give your creators tutorials so they know how to tag products ahead of your big moment.
• Creators know their stuff
Creators know their audience and style best. Lean on creators’ expertise to produce visuals and captions that feel authentic to them. Provide guidance, with room for them to apply their own creative lens.
Plan a product launch specific to Instagram to drive sales and create your own cultural moment.
Select a product that you're able to release at a specific day and time.
Leverage all of your channels (e.g. feed, stories, creators) to tease the product and features before launch.
Make it as easy as possible for people who are new to Checkout to purchase your product. Show them how to enter their payment information early so they can buy quickly and easily at launch.
Prior to launch, consider the amount of inventory you've set aside for Instagram-specific purchases. If inventory is limited, be sure to monitor sales closely to ensure fulfillment.
Utilize the hype and excitement around launch day to create content about the release.
Launching or offering a product exclusively on Instagram can drive urgency, with people understanding the limited window of opportunity to purchase.
Some product purchase decisions require more information and should have a longer pre-launch promotion than others. Higher priced products, multi-piece collections and varying size options all require additional consideration time.
Ensure that all promotional channels tell people where, when and how to purchase the product being launched. Include timezone specifics, purchase restrictions and any other details people need to know to purchase.
Partnering with a creator to launch a custom product allows you to feed off of the hype of multiple fanbases.
Pre-product launch, Chinatown Market posted tutorial videos and stories showing their followers how to set up payments for Checkout and use Instagram Shopping.
Chinatown Market posted content across all of their channels to generate pre- awareness for their upcoming $10 t-shirt launch.
Provide guidance for followers in your own voice to make promotion impactful and purchases easy.
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