Instagram Expands Shoppable Posts To Eight More Countries

After testing shoppable photo tags in 2016 and bringing the Shopping on Instagram feature to U.S. users last year, Instagram is now rolling out the feature for business accounts to eight more countries: Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia, TechCrunch reported.

“People come to Instagram every day to discover and buy products from their favorite businesses,” said Instagram Head of Business Jim Squires. “We want to be that seamless experience. Whether it’s a local artisan, florist or clothing store, shopping directly on Instagram has never been easier.”

The feature is useful because Instagram does not allow users to put links in photo captions. Prior to introducing the feature in the U.S., multiple third-party services, such as Like2Buy and LikeToKnowIt, launched to make posts shoppable.

If a consumer taps a post that uses Shopping for Instagram, a pop-up reveals product pricing and a link to a page within the app for more information. In addition, a “Shop Now” button takes users to an eCommerce store. Instagram hopes to expand the feature to allow its business users to show the shoppable photos to users other than their own followers.

In 2016, Instagram rolled out shoppable tags on photos from as many as 20 retail brands. According to a report by TechCrunch at the time, some of the brands included Kate Spade and JackThreads.

The service worked like this: Retailers tagged products in their photos, which weren’t visible until a user clicked the “tap to view products” button. After selecting the product, Instagram users saw a detail page within the app with specific information about the product, including price, description, additional photos and the “Shop Now” button.

Because the product pages loaded within Instagram, they appeared much quicker than if a consumer was sent to a browser, noted the report. Users were able to easily toggle between product details and their Instagram feed.