How to sell things on instagram without a website

Using Instagram instead of a website to sell your products

Looking to sell your products online but don’t have a website or online store set up yet? Learn how to sell on Instagram without a website!

Most of us know Instagram as a popular platform for sharing visual content. What some people don’t know is that it can be an effective ecommerce platform when done right. No website? No problem! As long as you have a bit of know-how, you can set up a successful online store that runs entirely on Insta.

Why should you sell products on Instagram?

Of Instagram’s 1 billion monthly users, about 200 million visit at least one business profile a day. This means that a good chunk of Instagram users are interested in purchasing from businesses on the platform. Instagram is also one of the most brand-friendly social media platforms out there. They’ve shifted their focus as of late to building out their shopping features and giving brands more opportunities to thrive.

Instagram is a perfect solution for some. But it isn’t for every business. While it provides a unique way to sell products, some of its features have specific use cases and can be difficult to scale.

Here are some key questions you should ask yourself before you jump into selling on the ‘gram:

Can your product be easily showcased using images or videos?

Instagram is a visual marketing platform. That means it’s a lot easier to sell products that have a strong visual appeal or aesthetic. Physical products like apparel, accessories, beauty products, home goods and outdoor/sporting goods are a great fit. Increasingly, we’re also seeing digital products like presets, custom fonts, and graphics have great success on the platform.

Do you already have an established web presence and website?

If you’re an established business, you’ll likely want to place most of your focus on driving traffic to your online store. Instagram has great features for this, such as Instagram Shopping Tags. However, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to use Instagram as your primary storefront if you already have a high volume of sales coming in through your website. You want to choose your sales channels wisely, and taking orders through Instagram could create too many channels for you to manage effectively.

Do you have the infrastructure in place to track and fulfill orders outside of Instagram?

It doesn’t need to be a full website. But you’ll still need to use a tool to track incoming orders from Instagram and collect important customer info. This can be as simple as an Excel sheet or you can use a more advanced spreadsheet tool like Airtable or Smartsheet.

If you’ve reviewed the questions above and determined that you’re a fit – congratulations! You’re ready to learn how to sell on Instagram without a website. You can use Instagram to make sales, build brand awareness and create traction for your business until you’re ready to launch a full online store.

Setting up your Instagram account for sales

You’ve established that your business is a great fit for selling on Instagram. Now it’s time to set yourself up for success.

First things first: make sure you have an Instagram Business Account

If you’re setting up your account for the first time, make sure you create it as a Business Profile. Instagram will prompt you during the setup process, so don’t sweat if you’re not sure where to look.

Having a business account unlocks features like the ability to add a phone number and email to your bio, insight data, and using paid ads to promote your products. Insights in particular are hugely valuable to assess what content is generating the most sales.

Already created your account as a personal profile? No worries – you can easily change it to a business one by logging into your account, going into “Settings” and tapping the “Switch to Business Profile” option.

You’re almost there! Once your business account is set up, you’ll need to connect a Facebook Business page and set up a Business Manager account. Even if you don’t have a website to connect to just yet, you can still create a catalogue that allows your customers to shop and checkout on Instagram (more on this below!)

Nail your bio

Without a website to add legitimacy, you need to give your audience all the info they need right away so they know you’re the real deal. For pointers, check out this article on how to set up your Instagram ecommerce bio for success.

To start, make sure you have your business name, a high-quality profile photo or logo, and a short description of the types of products you sell. You can also add a location to your bio. Community is huge when it comes to Instagram. If people know where to find you, they’ll be more likely to support you.

Lastly, make sure you fill out the email and phone number in your bio. Since your customers can’t contact you via a website, you need to add as many touch points as possible. This also helps build trust, which is important for any brand when selling online.

Organize your Instagram Story Highlights by product or collection

Without a website, it can be difficult for potential customers to know where to find a particular product or service. The more frictionless you can make the sales process, the more likely you’ll make the sale. And making sales is what we’re all about!

Organize your highlights into specific products or collections. This makes it easy for customers to access all the content you’ve created about a product in one place. To grab their attention, add a custom cover for each highlight. Here’s a great example from Letterfolk:

You can learn more about how to create engaging Instagram Story Highlights with this handy guide we made!

Create engaging Instagram content

This one goes without saying. Since Instagram is a primarily visual platform, you need to create content that’s visually appealing and showcases your products in fun and creative ways. We break these down further below.

Showcase your products with eye-catching content

Make sure your content showcases your products. While it can be useful to mix things up and throw in a graphic or a non-product photo every once in a while, your products are the star of your account and should be treated as such.

Here are some of our favorite accounts that have created a cohesive, eye-catching product feed.

@starbucks

@alicemccallptyltd

@flamingo_soap_co

Nice photography or videography goes a long way. It can also be fun to create unique, eye-catching designs that incorporate your products. Canva is a great tool and has a ton of templates to create product-based graphics. Check out some examples:

We recommend using a scheduling tool to visually plan an attractive and cohesive feed. Sked Social allows you to automatically publish posts of all types and analyze and learn from each post. Try a free 7-day trial here.

Use Instagram Reels and Instagram Live to build awareness

Reels

Reels are one of the best ways to grow brand awareness in 2021. Don’t sleep on this one! Since launching Instagram Reels in response to TikTok’s popularity, Instagram is pushing the feature hard and rewarding accounts that use them. Instagram’s CEO has even said that Instagram is moving from being primarily a photo-sharing platform to focusing more on video content.

Reels prioritize keeping people on the app which means serving viewers more content they like and increasing the chances of your content going viral. This is a golden opportunity for business owners. You’re getting more eyes on your content, which means potential customers will have a higher chance of finding you and seeing your products.

Instagram Live

Instagram Live is one of the app’s fastest growing features. The platform puts you top of mind by sending out notifications to your followers once you start a video. It also creates a sense of urgency since these videos typically disappear when you stop recording. This increases the odds that people will tune in to make sure they don’t miss anything important.

Get creative with it! Share customer testimonials, give people a behind the scenes look at how the product is made, or do a Reddit style “Ask Me Anything” where you invite your audience to ask questions about your business.

With Instagram rolling out Live Shopping, you can even make sales while you broadcast! Businesses and creators can now tag products when they go live so viewers can buy or save products added to the shopping video. Keep in mind that only products that have been approved by Instagram can be added to live videos.

Use social proof

HubSpot defines social proof as looking to other people for guidance on how you should respond in a particular situation. In a business context, this means that potential customers often look to people they know and trust before deciding to purchase a product.

There are a few ways to generate social proof for your brand without a website. One is to share testimonials or customer reviews on your page. But by far, the most effective method is to run an influencer campaign.

89% of brands say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels, with Instagram being reported as the most important channel for influencer marketing. Partnering with an influencer allows you to tap into an established audience that the influencer has built trust with. It can also be a great way to get your product or service in front of an audience that isn’t aware of you yet.

If you’re considering using Instagram influencer marketing for your business, check out this awesome guide we created on running a successful influencer campaign.

Create Instagram shoppable posts

Did you know that Instagram has built-in features to make your posts shoppable? With 130 million people tapping on shoppable posts each month, you’re leaving money on the table by not utilizing these features. Here are two ways you can make your posts shoppable:

Product Tags

Product Tags let you highlight items from your catalog in your content so people can easily tap to learn more. These can also connect right to your shop for in-app purchasing with checkout on Instagram.

Product Launches

Businesses with Instagram Checkout can now announce upcoming exclusive drops. This allows your audience to preview details and set reminders to buy when new products are available.

How to sell on Instagram without a website

This is the most important part of your sales process: choosing the right sales tool. We picked some of our favorite strategies and laid out the pros and cons of each so you can find what works for you.

Checkout in two steps with Instagram Checkout

Instagram’s Checkout feature is now available to all eligible businesses in the US. To use it, all you have to do is create a shoppable post that customers can tap. This creates an easy, streamlined process to turn your followers into loyal customers.

How it works: When your customers tap to view a product from a shopping post, they will see a “Checkout on Instagram” button on the product page. They can tap the button to select options like size or color and proceed to payment without ever leaving the app. They’ll need to enter their name, email, billing information, and shipping address the first time they check out. But Instagram keeps this info on file for future convenience.

Image via TechCrunch

While Instagram is still in the process of rolling out these features globally, the future looks bright for brands who want to sell on Instagram without using a website.

Pros: It’s the easiest way for customers to purchase your products without ever leaving the app. Remember: less steps = more sales for your business.

Cons: Transaction fees. According to Instagram’s Business Help Center, the fee is 5% per shipment or a flat fee of $0.40 for shipments of $8.00 or less. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but if you’re a small business or have slim product margins, these fees can take a chunk out of your profits.

Sell on Instagram using the comments

This method was more popular before Instagram created their own checkout feature, but it’s still a fun, easy way for people to shop.

Comment Sold allows you to convert your Instagram comments into sales. When a buyer comments on your post, they’ll be sent a link to an invoice with various payment options. Even better – you’ll receive a fulfillment order while your inventory is updated in real-time.

Image via Bloomberg

Pros: It’s exciting for customers because it’s highly interactive. You can also use customizable options to create a sense of urgency, such as limited-time sales and custom cart expiry times.

Cons: If you have a large following, your comments can get clogged up quickly and create a large influx of orders you may not be ready to manage. Make sure you have a plan in place to handle larger order volumes beforehand.

Sell using your Instagram DMs

You’ve created awesome content via Reels, Stories and Feed Posts to attract and nurture your ideal client. Now that you’ve got their attention, you can sell to them through Instagram Direct Messages.

Never start a DM convo with the intent to sell. This is the easiest way to scare off a customer, as they might find you too pushy. Instead, use this feature to provide value to your audience and deepen the relationship.

If you have a customer who regularly engages with your content, send them a DM thanking them and offer them a free product with their first purchase. It’s also a great way to retain existing customers. For instance, you can personally thank someone for their recent order and offer them a discount code for next time.

These transactions require some back and forth to collect the necessary information. For payment, you can use e-transfers, PayPal or Stripe’s new online marketplace for payments, Stripe Connect. You’ll also need to make sure you’re collecting and storing the customer’s contact information in a secure place, such as an Excel sheet.

Pros: Great for smaller businesses who want to build close connections with their customers. Adds a personal touch that ecommerce websites sometimes lack.

Cons: Difficult to scale. You must be organized and put external infrastructure in place to collect payments and store customer info.

Turn your link in bio into a storefront for your business

With a traditional ecommerce website, you’d normally use your link in bio to drive traffic to your online store. Nowadays, online businesses are getting much more creative with the link in their bios.

You can use Linktree or our tool, Sked Link, to create a custom storefront with clickable buttons. These buttons can direct customers to a simple landing page. Or ff you’re selling through Etsy or Amazon, you can drop those links in there. You can even connect it to something as simple as a Google form to collect orders.

Businesses are quickly realizing the value of having a social storefront. L’Oréal has a Linktree storefront, as does Roxy and a handful of other small companies. Even Shopify recommends that Instagram sellers direct people to a landing page like Linktree.

Check out this Linktree storefront for Bluchic, a company that sells website templates:

Pros: Your link is fully customizable, allowing you to list multiple products in one place, and drive traffic to a landing page.

Cons: Works best if you have your own landing page set up. It can become difficult to track orders and payments if you’re only using a Google Form, and linking to external websites like Amazon or Etsy drives traffic away from your account.

Summary

No matter which approach you take to selling on Instagram, there are tons of ways to take advantage of the platform and convert your followers into paying customers. Lots of brands have already had success selling on Instagram. The future looks bright for ecommerce brands on the platform.

Try out different things until you find what works for you! There’s no one-fits-all solution, but as long as you keep your customers top of mind and make the buying process as seamless as possible, you’re on the track to success.

How To Sell On Instagram Without A Website [2022]

Looking forward to taking your business to a whole new level without having a website or an online store? No worries, you don’t require a website to grow your sales. All you need is a free platform where you can establish an online presence, advertise, and can sell products online.

This article will discuss how to sell on Instagram without a website.

Instagram is one of the most popular platforms widely known for sharing selfies and posting images of pets and delicious food. Most small businesses have transformed Instagram into an eCommerce market for selling products online. Rather than attracting customers to the online store, they reach out to customers where they love spending their free time. Moreover, many eCommerce businesses are also using Instagram Feed on their websites to showcase shoppable posts.

According to one report by Clutch, nearly 36% of small companies don’t have a website. This blog post is all about how you can use Instagram for selling products without a website.

Table of Contents:

Can You Sell on Instagram Without a Website?
Top Reasons to Sell Products on Instagram
- Platform Where Customers Reside
- Requires No Investment
How to Sell on Instagram Without a Website?
- Decide Your Product & Niche
- Create a Business Account
- Write an Attractive Bio
- Create a Product Catalog
- Offer Multiple Payment Options
- Use Relevant Hashtags
- Employ Using Instagram Stories
- Post, Engage and Repeat
Conclusion

Can You Sell on Instagram Without a Website?

The most obvious answer is yes.

The website domain is one of the primary requirements to sell on Instagram as per Instagram’s commerce eligibility requirements. However, if you are willing to start an eCommerce store and budget is the main constraint, you can still sell on Instagram without a website by including a payment link in your profile bio. Later on, you can connect your profile when you have developed your eCommerce website and start leveraging sales through your Instagram profile.

Instagram helps generate sales and can create brand awareness. You can include the link in the bio and divert customers to make a purchase.

Top Reasons to Sell Products on Instagram

Instagram is the best place to expand and sell products online and offers several business opportunities. Instagram is a visual platform where you can share multiple images for your eCommerce products. It is one of the most popular platforms used widely by almost 2 billion active monthly users. Read If you are not using Instagram for your business, you are missing out on a great deal of audience.

Here are a few reasons to sell your products on Instagram:

Platform Where Customers Reside

Instagram is the 4th most-used social platform globally. One Instagram statistic shows that there are more than 2 billion monthly active users of Instagram.

This photo and video-sharing platform is being used by a wide range of audience base, right from the Gen-A to the baby boomers, making it a perfect platform for selling products online. Instagram is really easy to use and customers love using it. It is one of the best ways to provide a pleasant shopping experience to your customers. It helps increase engagement rate, reach out wide customer base and sell products easily.

Requires No Investment

Selling on Instagram without a website requires no investment and is quite an easy task. All you need to do is create a business account, grow your follower count, and use the right strategy to sell. It is an amazing platform to grow your online business if used in the right way. By selling on Instagram, you are providing great value to the users. As a result, by establishing trust, the chances of returning to your online store increase when they think of making a purchase.

How to Sell on Instagram Without a Website?

Since its release, Instagram made giant strides by providing unique features that comprise everything you need to take your business to the next level.

How to sell your products on Instagram? Confused enough?

Worry not! You are at the right place. I have provided a list of steps to sell on Instagram without a website.

Decide Your Product & Niche

The most common question that you might have in your mind is — How to start selling on Instagram?

Before selling on Instagram, pick up a product and niche that will help give a direction to expand your business on Instagram. It is advisable to have an in-depth knowledge of the niche you choose, which will be helpful to you in growing your business. Targeting a specific niche will even make it easier for the audience to discover your business to get their problem solved.

After deciding your niche, you can use Instagram to attract customers by using hashtags relevant to your niche.

Create a Business Account

A business Instagram profile will help have a competitive advantage in selling through Instagram. There are abundant benefits of having a business account on Instagram, which is as follows:

You can measure certain metrics that help you know how well your content is performing using a built-in analytical tool.
Instagram even allows promoting high-performing posts by paying additional and easily advertising them on their followers’ list.
Customers can shop directly from Instagram itself without leaving the app.
Instagram provides an added benefit for business accounts with more than 10,000 followers that facilitate buyers to add swipe-up links to their stories.
Instagram even provides the facility to add contact details such as phone numbers and email addresses so that your followers can easily connect with you.

Write an Attractive Bio

Creating a solid bio for your Instagram account can impress your profile visitors. It should not cross the character limit of more than 150 words. You must follow certain steps to create an attractive bio for Instagram:

Define your brand in a single line, identify the brand and mention the brand authority.
Ensure using appropriate call-to-action statements that encourage the visitors to convert.

Create a Product Catalog

While visiting a physical store, you primarily ask the merchants to show you the products. Likewise, while selling products online, shoppers wish to look at product images before making a purchase. As Instagram is a photo-posting site, you can utilize maximum features by posting attractive images and amazing captions.

Offering pleasing images with attractive captions persuades customers to make a purchase. Such a platform even motivates merchants for creating a product catalog that is easy to share. Customers even directly purchase the platform itself. It also provides the facility to tag the products in your catalog.

Offer Multiple Payment Options

It’s a perfect time to grab your audience’s attention while browsing the products to place an order and make a purchase. You can add the payment link in the bio to capture payments for the orders.

Customers find it convenient to purchase a product online when they are provided with their preferred payment method. You can leverage the benefits of multiple payment methods in your Instagram shop by providing various payment methods. You can also use payment qr codes in product images, add payment links to bio or product description, add payment address etc. for accepting payments.

You can make a well-informed decision on which payment options are best suited for your target audience by analyzing your customer base. Having multiple payment options helps increase conversion rates and establishes brand credibility.

Use Relevant Hashtags

Using relevant hashtags is one of the best ways to reach out to new customers and bring your content in front of new audience. You can keep an eye on trending hashtags that are best for your brand and perform well. Ensure choosing the most appropriate hashtags that your target audience might be searching for related to your product.

Employ using a hashtag research tool to find the perfect hashtags for your product. By just entering the most relevant hashtags, you can get several suggestions. Don’t flood your post with too many hashtags. Instagram supports adding up to 30 hashtags, but it is advisable to keep it to 4-5 hashtags per post. This will help you gain engagement.

Employ Using Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are a great way to attract shoppers and easily convince people to make a purchase. You can leverage the benefits of the effectiveness of Instagram stories by showcasing your products to customers. You can also create stories related to your hot-selling products and educate the customers on how they can solve their problems.

Moreover, you can also post stories about your happy customers and tag them for building social proof. This can help you build a loyal community in the long go.

Instagram stories are some of the effective ways to attract, educate, and convince customers. Here are some of the tips for using Instagram stories:

Use the countdown timer to create urgency amongst your customers.
Engage with your audience using question stickers, polls, quizzes, etc.
Keep your top-performing stories in highlights.

Post, Engage, and Repeat

Maintaining consistency in Instagram posting helps expand your business to the next level. This will create better engagement amongst your community and easily identify their needs. It is crucial to develop a solid content plan and then follow it to convert visitors into customers. The plan should be practical and scalable.

You need to follow some powerful tips for creating engaging content which is as follows:

Post short and to-the-point captions. You can create more engagement by asking a question or motivating the followers to tag someone in the comment section.
Post photos with an influencer promoting your product or share photos of the customers with your product.
Reach out to a wide customer base by starting a conversation with people in the comment section and creating more engagement.

Conclusion

You can easily start an online business, even without having a website. You need to develop a solid strategy and establish a social media presence to pitch it to potential customers. Several tools are available in the market that helps simplify your marketing process, but at times starting with a free tool like Instagram is all it takes to give a great start.

It is pivotal to publish content continuously and stay engaged with your audience. If done rightly, you can have a profitable eCommerce store eliminating the need for a website. Many top brands have seen great success selling on Instagram, and maybe yours might be the next one!

Fetch Instagram images, edit & show them in the front end to give a look & feel of an Instagram shop in Magento 2 stores.

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How to add a product catalog to Instagram, how to tag products

Elena
Sergeeva Targeted advertising specialist

According to Facebook Ads, 70% of users learn about new products from Instagram. To help sellers promote them, Instagram created the Instagram Shopping tool, which became available in Russia in March 2021. We will tell you why to connect this tool and how to set it up.

What is Instagram Shopping

Instagram Shopping is a tool that allows you to tag products in your posts and Stories. Instagram takes information about products from the catalog that the seller uploads.

The profile with the option enabled looks like this:

There is a bag icon on the photo, which means that if you open the post, goods will be marked in it. Source: COS

Several items can be noted in the photo. When clicking on shopping tags, users will see the price and description of the product, and will also be able to follow the link and place an order on the site.

In addition to prices and the products themselves, the user also sees additional information about them: in the description, you can specify the composition of the fabric, size, available colors, etc. The user can also view the item from different angles in the gallery or learn about other products of the online store All this without leaving Instagram.

To get to the catalog with goods, you need to click on the "View store" button. Inside the store, products can be grouped into thematic collections, such as new arrivals or gifts.

US residents can pay for items within the app using Facebook Pay. In other countries, including Russia, this option is not yet available: users follow the link on the product to an external site and pay for the order there.

Why include Instagram Shopping

The selling element is integrated into the content, which is convenient for both the buyer and the seller. The buyer does not need to switch between applications and communicate with the seller to select a product and find out its characteristics. And the seller can do without the same type of posts in the “follow the link in the description” format.
Sellers don't have to create multiple posts for different products: they can be placed on one photo. Adding products does not take much time, and you can mark them not only in posts, but also in Stories.
Also can be found in automatic recommendations in the "Shop" tab, which appeared for some users. You can keep up to date with the latest from your favorite brands.

Setting up Instagram Shopping: Getting Started

Read the Facebook Ads Trade Agreement : it describes the requirements for goods, the responsibility of the parties, etc. For example, Facebook prohibits the sale of brand replicas and any products with copyright infringement, and in order for the system algorithms to work correctly, the advertiser must consent to the transfer of data from his site. Violation of the trading agreement can result in account suspension.
Create an Instagram account - for business or for the author. You can't post items on your personal profile. How to set up a business account on Instagram, we tell in the instructions.
Link your Instagram account to your Facebook business page . For more information on how to do this, we have described in the article. If you don't already have a business page, create a Facebook Business Manager account first, you'll need it to set up your store in Commerce Manager. With Business Manager, you can manage your Facebook and Instagram accounts and pages, and assign people who can work with them.
Download product catalog . The new catalog is created in Facebook's Commerce Manager, a section within the social network where you can manage your inventory and sales. If you already have a catalog, you can add it using one of the partner platforms: OpenCart, WooCommerce, Shopify, etc. We will talk about this when we go through the setup.

In the catalog you can

Manage products: create them, edit the image, description, price and other important characteristics.
Combine products into collections to show customers exactly what they are interested in.
Give access to product management to other people or partner companies.
Set the country and language so that buyers see the correct information and the correct prices.

How to add products to Instagram through Commerce Manager

The system prompts you to create a shop or catalog. The store is a single storefront for Instagram and Facebook, which is available to companies with physical goods. To promote products on Instagram, click Add Catalog. Choose the type of catalog depending on the subject of your business, e-commerce is suitable for online stores.

In the next step, you need to configure the parameters and method for loading products. From the drop-down list, select the advertising account to which the catalog will be linked.

You can create a catalog yourself - by uploading a spreadsheet or by connecting a pixel - or through integration with one of the partner platforms. In the second case, the goods will be loaded from an existing online store.

Click the "Create" button - the catalog is ready.

Important : the catalog must contain exact prices and information about the availability of each item. In addition, the rules for returning goods must also be indicated - on the store's website or in the Instagram account.

To proceed with product creation, select the desired catalog in Commerce Manager and then click Add Products.

Add products using one of the following methods:

Manually - this method involves filling out a form for each product and is suitable for companies with a small assortment.
Via a data feed (spreadsheet). You can download many products at once and set up regular updates. Files in CSV, TSV and XML (RSS/ATOM) formats are supported, as well as Google Sheets.
Automatically - through integration with one of the partner platforms. In this case, the goods will be loaded from the existing store.
Using the Facebook pixel. If you haven't installed the pixel yet, we recommend contacting the webmaster.

If you choose to download manually, a form will open. In it you need to add the name of the product, its description, images, link to the site and price. The system will tell you which data is not required.

After completing the form and uploading, the products will appear in your catalog.

How to create a collection with products

Inside the catalog, products can be grouped into collections: for example, by subject, season, upcoming holidays, etc. Collections help sellers to get to the user's interests more accurately, and users to quickly select goods.

You can create not only standard collections, but also those that will attract more attention, such as "Top 10 coats" or "Gifts for best friends".

You can combine products into groups manually or using filters, for example, if there are a lot of products.

At the final stage, specify the name of the collection and click the "Create" button.

After creating a product catalog, you need to send an account for verification. The verification may take several days.

How to add products to Instagram

To add a catalog to Instagram, go to the "Settings" section in the application and select the "Company" tab.

Then click "Set up Instagram Shopping" and follow the prompts.

If the catalog passes the verification, a "Purchases" section will appear in your Instagram account. Once your account is approved, turn on Instagram Shopping. To do this, in the "Purchases" section, select the product catalog that you want to connect, and click "Finish".

How to tag an item

To tag an item in a post, start posting as usual - add a photo and post text, and then follow these steps:

Click Mark Items.
Find the product you need and select it from the catalog.
Click "Done" and share the post with your followers.

You can also mark the product in Stories. To do this:

Select an image to publish and click on the sticker icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
Select the product sticker and the desired product in the catalog.
Tag a product with a sticker and share your story with your followers.

Up to 5 products can be tagged in one photo, up to 20 in total in the gallery. In Stories, a sticker is added to only one product, but you can change its color and text.

In conclusion

Instagram Shopping will increase sales and user engagement in your account. The product catalog can be used not only to familiarize subscribers with the assortment, but also to set up targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

We especially recommend this tool for e-commerce: the user immediately sees the price and all information about the product. True, if a product or service involves preliminary communication with the client and a long transaction cycle, then the published price may scare the user away. Therefore, before using Instagram Shopping, consider whether the tool suits your product and the behavior of your target audience.

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How to connect Instagram Shopping | Manual

Since March 2022, Instagram has been banned in Russia. In other countries, all its features are still available.

Instagram Shopping allows users to buy directly from a photo or video in any section of the social network. At the same time, there are different opportunities in different countries. About all the nuances - in this article.

Instagram Shopping Features

When creating a store, you can choose a sales scheme. On the website, on Facebook, on Instagram or through private messages. There are limitations here.

Somewhere you can’t sell inside the application - only show tags, information about the product in the card, and then go to the site, from where you can already place an order.

In the US and a number of other countries, full functionality is available - placing an order directly in the application. It works on the basis of the Facebook Pay service. Companies decide for themselves whether to connect the checkout feature on Instagram or not.

If they decide not to connect, they will be able to transfer the user to the site, and use Instagram solely as a showcase. The company and bank account must be registered in the United States.

If you're temporarily in a country where Instagram Shopping isn't available (for example, while traveling), you may lose the ability to tag products. Restoring access takes up to 2 weeks.

How to connect Instagram Shopping

Consider a variant with limited functionality when sales go through the site. The feature is available on business accounts that are connected to a Facebook page.

MySklad already has integration with Instagram Shopping and Facebook — you can automatically upload products, current balances and prices to social networks, and add product links directly to posts.

Create a catalog on your page on the social network, and unload the goods, their modifications, photos, prices and balances from My Warehouse. The data is synchronized automatically - you can set the interval or start the update yourself at a convenient time.

A link to the main online store is attached to each product - the buyer follows it and places an order. Integration is available free of charge on all tariffs of MoegoSklad. You can set it up if your business account on the social network has the Instagram Shopping feature. See video instructions for more details.

How to set up Instagram Shopping

Create and link a directory. Can be done using the Commerce Manager tool, a desktop platform for managing sales on Facebook and Instagram. The service helps to create a new catalog or connect an existing one, process orders, etc. To use product tags and stickers, select an e-commerce catalog.
Connect Instagram Shopping in your profile settings and submit your account for verification. It usually takes several days. The verification status can be found at any time in the "Purchases" section in the settings. As soon as the account is approved, a notification will be sent from Instagram.

After that, you can create a post with a shopping feature. Up to five products can be added to a post with one image, and up to 20 products can be added to a post with multiple photos or videos. You can only add one product sticker per post in Stories.

Thus, you use Instagram Shopping as a storefront - a buyer on the social network will examine the product, but will go to the site to purchase.

Instagram Shopping Tags and other opportunities to promote

Instagram Shopping has a set of tools that make trading easier.

Collections of goods. You can collect products into groups by topic. At the same time, it is not necessary to make collections that are familiar to everyone, for example, “New Products” or “Hits of Sales”. Categories can be any and convenient for customers. You can create "10 Gifts for Grandma" or "All for the Holidays".

Product tags. Instagram Shopping Tags are special tags. The user clicks on them and gets to the page with information about the product. From there, he can go to the site and make a purchase. Thus, the number of clicks decreases, and the client does not postpone the purchase.

Advertising. You can set up ads with product tags. You can promote already existing publications with tagged products in the feed or popular, or create new ads in Ads Manager.

You can also create custom audiences for advertising: select groups of users who have performed a specific action. For example, those who viewed or saved the product. How to set up ads - we tell below.

You can attract new customers by creating new custom audiences or expanding old ones. Create a user group from both Facebook and Instagram. You can include more sources if you choose audience expansion.

For example, you can create a shopping custom audience that includes people from both Facebook and Instagram. You can also create a shopping custom audience based on multiple events. For example, based on the Add to Cart and View Product Details events.

For whom and for what niches Instagram Shopping is suitable

To understand which product is easier to promote on Instagram, you need to look at the portrait of the platform's audience. It's more of a female audience. Age category from 18 to 34 years.

Hence the assumption of which products will sell well on Instagram:

Things that reflect the lifestyle - clothes, jewelry, shoes, accessories, cosmetics, perfumes, sporting goods.
Trendy products that reflect the spirit of the times. It can be anything from a case for wireless headphones to masks and sanitizers.
Visually appealing products whose purchases are dictated by emotions. For example, decorative interior items or handmade.

The list can be supplemented with household appliances, car parts and pet products. We will talk about limitations in the next section.

The US was among the first to gain access to Instagram Shopping in 2018. And there, entrepreneurs can already draw conclusions about its effectiveness.

Magnolia Boutique women's clothing store owner Susan DelPriore told Big Commerce that after publishing 117 tagged posts, traffic from Instagram increased by 4% and revenue from the social network increased by 20%. She advised telling subscribers about the new feature in the feed and stories, as well as doing cross-promotion in other social networks. In addition, it is important to give instructions on how to place an order correctly.

John Lott, director of children's clothing store SpearmintLOVE, said that after 208 posts on Instagram Shopping, traffic from the social network increased by 12.61%, and revenue from Instagram increased by 8%. He also noted that it was important to tell subscribers about the new feature - the store published instructions in stories for two weeks.

Do not forget that in the USA the option of ordering and paying directly from the social network works.

What not to sell on Instagram

Instagram is owned by Facebook and is part of its advertising network. The same rules apply for paid publications of both sites.

For example, you cannot advertise and sell tobacco and tobacco products, as well as prescription drugs, drugs, and wiretapping devices.

We have put together in a table a list of all products that cannot be advertised on Instagram. Download and study it.

Fragment of table

Download Facebook and Instagram trading rules

How to manage the range of products in Instagram Shopping

On Instagram, just like on Facebook, you need to upload the products you are going to sell to a catalog. There are two ways to link a catalog to your social network account:

Via Commerce Manager. This is a do-it-yourself tool available in Facebook Business Manager.
Through a partner e-commerce platform. For example, Shopify or Big Commerce.

By the way, if you have a store on Shopify, you can connect it to the MyStorage service. This is how you add data on orders and counterparties from the platform for launching an online store to a single accounting system, where there is everything for online trading.

In My Warehouse, you can always see information about the balances that will be automatically uploaded to Shopify.

Try MySklad

With the catalog you can:

Add and manage product details. You can upload an image, write a description, set a price, change color or size. And also - add several positions at once and a link to the store's website.
Group ads. This is useful if you need to combine different posts with a common theme. For example, information about discounts and promotions.
Create selections for stores. To show customers all the products that may be of interest to them.
Assign permissions. Then other people or partner companies will be able to work with your catalog.
Download country and language information. This way, buyers will automatically see the correct information and prices for items in the ad or in the store.

Read also: 7 problems that prevent trading on the Internet

It is not necessary to create multiple directories. All product data can be stored in one. You can change information about a product in the catalog at any time. But it is important that it always contains accurate data on prices and availability of each item.

Also, the rules for returning goods and funds should be written either on your website or in the store's Instagram account: for example, in current stories or in a separate post.

Sometimes sellers do not indicate the cost of goods and call it only in private messages. But not everyone does this. For example, the NeBabushka yarn store does not hide prices, says its owner Natalya Maltseva. The ability to put a price tag directly on a photo in a post is convenient for her.

We have never closed prices. The price in the label in the post will not scare anyone away. And if this happens, then this is not a representative of our target audience.

Natalia Maltseva

shop owner "NeBabushka"

See also: How to tie big money: the success story of the Nebabushka yarn store

According to Natalia Maltseva, Instagram Shopping tools will help meet spontaneous demand: “Now it’s traditional for us — follow the link in the profile description. And the person is forced to either leave the post and follow this link, or enter the name of the site in the browser.”

But for some sellers, the main disadvantage of Instagram Shopping is precisely that live communication with the client is lost. Sellers say that sometimes with the “answered price in PM” format, a dialogue is started with the client, which ultimately leads to a sale. Indeed, in a live conversation, the seller can always offer an alternative or resell something else.

Firstly, you can use visual content to attract potential customers, and secondly, you can immediately get feedback.

“If you break Instagram down into elements, then there will be no unique tools for promotion in the social network,” says Ekaterina Pyankova, a target specialist at MoegoSklad.

Hashtags, targeting, bloggers, smart feed - all this is also available in other social networks. Taken together, the social network continues to be one of the best for business. There are probably almost no brands left that do not have an Instagram account.

Ekaterina Pyankova

targetologist of My Warehouse

The owner of the NeBabushka store believes that the secret of Instagram's effectiveness is that communities of people with the same interests are quickly formed there.

People come to see what's going on in the store. And through Instagram, we convey the atmosphere that residents of other cities and countries cannot feel when they come to the store. For them, this is a kind of window.

Sales in social networks are suitable for those who want to receive orders online and at the same time do not invest in the creation and promotion of an online store. Watch our tutorial to learn where your products will sell best, how to process orders, and how you can save money.

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Targeted advertising

There are three main ways to promote your store on Instagram:

targeted advertising,
advertising with bloggers,
advertising in thematic communities.

Ekaterina Pyankova considers target to be the most effective of them. This is an advertisement that is shown to an audience according to predetermined parameters: user behavior on the network, their age, interests and field of activity.

It is easier for those who use it to increase sales, because in this way the publication is most likely to be seen by those who are interested in buying. To run targeted advertising, all you need is a business account.

There are no fixed numbers on Instagram. Sometimes it's expensive and good, sometimes it's cheap and bad, sometimes it's expensive and bad, sometimes it's cheap and good. Any result is useful information for further work.

To run targeted ads, you need to set up a campaign in your Ads Manager dashboard. Through it, for example, you can run ads on:

people who "similar" to your customers in terms of age, occupation and hobbies;
all visitors to your page or site;
regular customers;
visitors who added items to their cart but did not purchase them.

Most stores stop at targeting or working with bloggers.

We review our products and engage bloggers to talk about our products. We didn’t work with targeting for a while, but now we have changed a specialist, and we will launch this type of advertising again.

Shopping ads and posts tagged with Instagram Shopping Tags

Instagram Shopping tools complement existing types of advertising. For example, you can promote posts with tagged products or create ads from scratch in Ads Manager.

Product tagged ad For a business that has been promoting their products on Instagram for a long time, the button to go to the site under the publication is a chance to increase sales even more.

The ability to place a link to buy under the post will significantly increase the conversion.

What hinders the promotion of goods

Since 2016, Instagram has had an algorithmic feed, so the time of publication of advertising posts does not affect their effectiveness in any way. But the cheating of subscribers, which is still sometimes used by both business and bloggers, will not lead to anything good. In the worst case, you can lose your account.

There are other difficulties that a business may face.

If you don’t have a constant influx of new subscribers, the number of outreaches decreases. Our task now is to ensure a constant influx of fresh subscribers.

“The audience has high requirements for brands. The account must comply with trends and actively adapt to new ones. And at the same time, there are high requirements for sincerity and openness,” explains Ekaterina Pyankova.

The influence of Instagram is based on visual imagery and on conveying emotions through text and video. If a person did not immediately respond to your offer, it is likely that in a second he will be distracted and fly away somewhere else.

For example, it’s not enough for a clothing brand to simply post a photo. The audience expects videos from production, promotions, contests, high-quality videos, user-generated content.

The audience of the social network is spoiled, any “respite” threatens with replies and loss of interest.