Instagram introduces ‘Shop Now’ feature
Retailers may soon be able to sell their products on Instagram. Etsy’s social updates, buyable Pins and visual search on Pinterest, and optimized product publishing with Nembol are the main social commerce strategies any seller can put in place right away.
Instagram is currently beta testing a new feature that allows retailers to tag up to 5 items in an Instagram post, each with a direct link to the item for sale. The transaction would not take place on Instagram, but rather on the retailer’s website.
The idea of tagging items on pictures and selling on social media has been around for some years now, and different services joined the competition to offer the best hashtag selling tool or shoppable Instagram feed. However, when the platform introduces a native feature, as Instagram just did, the game changes and the shopping experience for the consumer has the potential to become really seamless.
Before Instagram: Etsy and Pinterest
Etsy launched Shop Updates last February, visual posts where a seller can tag items for sale. Shop Updates are meant to allow sellers to “share behind-the-scenes photos with followers on Etsy and on social media”. The publications appear in fact on the Etsy social feed only, and sellers need to take action in order to share them on other social media as well.
Pinterest too is moving towards social commerce with its buyable Pins and visual search. Buyable Pins are automatically created for products pinned from any online store where the feature is supported (Shopify, Demandware, Magento or BigCommerce) and enabled. Visual Search is a powerful feature that lets Pinterest users search for similar items based on picture similarities.
Optimizing social commerce with Nembol
When selling online, it’s important to give visibility to each and every product listing. Social feeds are ephemeral, and adding product publications to your social strategy can help you increase traffic to your website and product for sale. As of today, there are many selling venues and several social media to use, and managing them all can quickly become too time-consuming.
With Nembol, you can publish multi-channel with a single gesture, and social posts are automatically linked to the product listing so that your fans and followers are easily redirected to the product for sale. The Nembol app is currently available for free on iOS and Android devices, and a web version is in the making. Stay tuned!
