Good news! Shoppable Instagram posts are now finally available in Australia. Cue a happy dance from thousands of small business owners around the country.
The photo app first began testing shoppable photo tags internationally in 2016, and this week, Naomi Shepherd, Group Industry Director, Facebook and Instagram ANZ announced Australia is getting in on the action too.
“We’re thrilled to be the first international market outside of Europe and the Americas to enable ‘Shopping’ for our local community, providing businesses and retailers of all sizes with the tools to connect with customers in a fresh, immersive way,” she said in a statement.
Instagram is working with local retailers Country Road, Myer and PepperMayo to launch ‘Shopping’ into the local market.
Previously, if users wanted to buy products directly from Instagram, they’d have to leave the app to search for it online or use a third party tool such as LikeToKnowIt. Now users can click on the shoppable tag, see the price and product information before they click directly through to the retailer’s website.
Eighty percent of Instagram users follow a business; and the move is well overdue for retailers to finally be able to capitalise on their beautifully curated images and feeds.
One of our Premium members, Kristy Withers of Incy Interiors, tested the shoppable feature on her US website with BigCommerce earlier in the year and saw an immediate increase in sales.
“We have recently finished the trial, and during the two-week timeframe we saw an uplift of 5% in sales on our US website,” says Kristy.
“From our perspective, it was super easy to set up, but the most important thing is that it is a much better user experience for the customer.”
“The two downsides we have encountered so far are that you cannot schedule shoppable Instagram posts, and that we can only have one website linked,” says Kristy. “As we have both an Australian and US website, but only one Instagram account it does make it slightly confusing for customers.”
So how can you get Instagram shopping for your business? Kristy uses BigCommerce or you can do it via Shopify; but first you need to have a shop approved in the Facebook channel – for more, head to Shopify’s Instagram page for more information.
While we were chatting to Kristy, we asked her for top quick and dirty Instagram tips (Incy Interiors has 80k followers and her personal account has over 50k followers on Instagram):
1. Consistent posting, we post four times a day
2. Posting at peak times of the day, we do this to suit both our Australian and international audiences
3. Eye-catching images, make us stand out from the crowd
4. Encourage customers to share their images and tag their Incy products
5. Make sure you are doing a mix of posting + stories
Kristy is a Premium member of Business Chicks, connect with her on our member platform here.
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