Social Media have become a sales point for online retailers and there’s no surprise, that Instagram is on the road to follow. The portal has already launched some tools for e-commerce like ads and “shop now” buttons, that help customers to get to know the offer. Now, Instagram is testing clickable price tags, to make “buying what you see” a real thing.
Instagram shoppable tags allow checking the price and product details without leaving the app. Simply, when you scroll your feed on Instagram, at the bottom of a photo there will be a Call to Action button: “Tap to view products.” This way the aesthetic aspects of the photos will be preserved until you want to check out more.
After a click, tags with the prices will appear on the original photo, and if you are still interested, taping on a tag will redirect you to full product photo or a gallery, with detailed description. Only then can you click to “Shop now.” This is UX master trick as most of Instagram users operate on mobile devices, with no intention of leaving the app when browsing. Same interface, clean look and possibility of returning to regular feed with no time, is more than encouraging.
Why use Instagram Shoppable Tags?
Shopping without leaving Instagram is a brilliant idea. First of all, we live in an era of split-attention, driven by mobile apps, interactions and content. Being redirected to a landing page – just to read more info on the product – seems inconvenient and takes too much time to follow. Not every e-commerce page is fully responsive and finding the right product’s size or colour can be a fuss. Secondly, nearly every online purchase takes time to consider.
Mobile Buyer’d decisions take a whole day or more, with only 21% of them made in less than 24h.
Call to Actions are sometimes too offensive, missing a few steps that should be placed before the purchase. Internal survey done by Instagram has shown, that most mobile buyer’s decisions take a whole day or more, with only 21% of them done in less than 24h. That’s why Instagram is thinking of adding a “Save” button to this new feature – users could easily return to interesting products. Instagram’s interface is intuitive and users already know it, that’s why the next step – checking the product & purchasing – would be a natural feature for shoppers.
Instagram shoppable tags were tested on over 20 US brands. Because of the testing, Instagram experienced downtime at around 10:00 on 1 of November – it took a few minutes to fix the problem, still leaving users concerned about the testing. When we will see the effects? The date is yet unknown.