Instagram Integration Comes To Shopify

Shopify, the eCommerce company, is now offering Instagram integration to its merchants.

According to news in TechCrunch, Shopify has been testing the Instagram shopping service throughout this year and is now opening it up to the thousands of merchants that use its shopping platform.

Shopify already has integration with Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Buzzfeed and others, reported TechCrunch. With the tool, merchants on Instagram can now tag products that users can purchase, offering an option to do so directly within the mobile app. With integration by Shopify, this ability is easier to set up, particularly for users that already sell products via Shopify, noted the report.  

TechCrunch noted that Shopify has said Instagram is a big driver of merchant store traffic and that the service could result in increased eCommerce sales. The rollout is being offered to thousands of select merchants but will eventually be available to hundreds of thousands of stores and sellers that have accounts on the mobile app, noted the report.

In July, Shopify, which is based in Canada, inked a deal with eBay that enabled merchants to sell directly through eCommerce website. According to a news report in Bloomberg at the time, by teaming up with eBay, Shopify gained another outlet for its 400,000 users. The eBay integration is initially available for U.S. customers selling in U.S. currency.

When the company partnered with Amazon back in 2015, their deal was similar in nature. Shopify’s strategy has long been to integrate with as many eCommerce channels it can so that its customers can diversify away from their own website. Shopify provides merchants with payment tools, shipping services and small loans. Unlike Amazon and eBay, which build marketplaces, Shopify provides tools for merchants to sell their products online and offers point-of-sale (POS) software and hardware for physical retailers. BigCommerce, a rival of Shopify, is already integrated with eBay, noted the Bloomberg report.