Instagram gears up for the ‘Shopaholics’

After a remarkable success in test shopping with 20 brands, Instagram is finally heading towards a fully functional online store. Yes, you heard it right, Instagram is developing new shopping features to cater to its user-base and allow them to load their carts right from the feed wall.

People love to have a large variety of products to choose from, but not many people are fond of brick and mortar stores these days. Instagram – like any other online store – is granting the ease of shopping by placing the entire store in customers’ fingers.

Image Source: marketingland.com

 According to Instagram, people use their app with a discovering mindset and they proceed with the same, hence by providing them a shopping portal within the app is like removing an obstacle from the way. In a study it was found that 84% of smartphone users in the US, research and compare products online and nearly about 60% of Instagram users learn about the products on the app. These numbers were the milestones for the development of shopping feature within the app.

MVMT Watches and Warby Parker were among those twenty selected brands, Instagram tested the shopping feature on its app with. The eminent interest people had shown to the posts with products tagged in them, did actually stimulate the idea of launching the platform of online shopping in Instagram app.

What’s New?

image source: searchenginejournal.com

Instagram is not going to amend the feed wall experience, rather you will see a “Tap to view products” icon in the lower corner of the image. Tapping the icon would show the tags next to every item with its name and price. The technical expansion would include a handy way for the retailers to tag their products and to keep a track of their success with all the numbers. Instagram is going to start the online shopping with apparel, jewelry and beauty products being the major areas of interest.

What makes Instagram special?

Unlike other online shopping portals, Instagram has the power of users. It has a whopping 600 million active users. Having this number of users is an advantage over the competitors itself because then it doesn’t have to spend a single penny to create a customer-base or on marketing. At any point of time, Instagram would have a considerable number of people surfing through the products with a higher probability of sales conversion.

Image Source:statista.com

 Taking everything into account, Instagram is a front runner to become another leading online shopping store. Considering the power of active users and public reactions, the app and site can expect a huge hike in the profit graph. However, to capture the realm of the digital market, it has to win over the consumers and deliver on its promises.

Let us know what do you think about Instagram’s online shopping venture?