When I first heard about this new feature, it was last year and primarily for US businesses, but that’s just changed.
I was casually scrolling through my Instagram Stories, and there was an unusual entry right before any of the accounts I follow. It was from Instagram, and it said “new!”. Of course, I clicked.
Whilst I am not someone who will benefit in the way of making money from this feature upgrade, I can appreciate what this means for businesses.
With this new feature, businesses in the UK can now add price, and description tags to specific images and when clicked on, will go straight through to a purchasable link (a website).
Instagram said the following:
We know that Instagram is a great place for people to discover and share their passions. With shopping on Instagram, this sense of discovery goes even further by giving people a visual storefront to explore new products from businesses they follow. With easy access to pricing and product details, shoppers can tap on a tagged post within feed or through the shop button on a business's profile to take the next steps to learn more.
There are, of course, rules and regulations around this. You have to be eligible as a business to be able to utilise this feature. To find out what they are, click here.
I think this is a great addition to Instagram’s already successful feature list, however; I do worry how this will affect those of us who love using Instagram to share great content.