Be on the lookout on Instagram, because it's rolling out in a new feature this week. This feature is already being coined as "Shopping Tags," which will reveal details about the product,in terms of price, when clicked on. This allows the users the benefit of knowing more about the product without actually leaving the app. To top it all off, if you tap on the link called shop now in the product details, you'll go directly to that product on that business' website, making it the experience even easier.
Because of these new tags, brands won’t have to resort to “check link in bio” captions on their photos, since Instagram doesn’t allow links in organic posts, and only lets profiles include a single URL.
To truly see if it will benefit brands, a number of them signed up as test partners. The list of partners include:
- Abercombie&Fitch
- BaubleBar
- Coach
- Hollister
- JackThreads
- J.Crew
- Kate Spade
- Levi’s Brand
- Lulus
- Macy’s
- Michael Kors
- MVMT Watches
- Tory Burch
- Warby Parker
- Shopbop
Instagram will not be taking a cut of the purchases, though. Instead, they plan on monetizing the product by allowing brands to pay to show their shoppable photos to people who don’t follow them, says Instagram’s VP of monetization, James Quarles.
The company did focus groups in LA and Chicago, where Quarles says it found that the main gripe of shoppers on Instagram was “I want to learn more, but it’s very hard to go do a web search from another app. The product details are hard to find.”
With this, it solves that issue and makes the process of purchases of those eye-catching products an altogether more pleasant experience.
Kudos to the team for setting the foundation for an interactive marketplace on the platform.
