Instagram has taken yet another step towards becoming a shopping app. The Facebook-owned company announced it will now allow users to shop directly from Stories.
Up until now, Instagram only let users to shop via their feeds. But with the Shopping feature available in Stories, folks will be able to purchase the desired items via Stories, thus eliminating the extra step of heading to another website.
Now when viewing Instagram Stories from brands, you can tap stickers with a shopping bag icon attached to it to get more details about the product. Along with purchasing options.
More and more users are turning to Instagram for shopping
For now, the new shopping feature in Stories is available to a select number of brands including Adidas, Aritzia, and Louis Vuitton, but more brands will be added in the near future.
Note that the tool is only available for business, not individual sellers or consumers trying to make extra cash. What’s more, companies can only directly link their own products. This means they won’t be able to sell through a third-party retailer. At least for now.
Obviously, there is immense value for brands hoping to shorten the path-to-purchase for their customers. But also users are set to benefit greatly from the feature. It’s often discouraging to discover an awesome product on Instagram and has no clear way to buy it. Well with Shopping in Feed and now Stories, Instagram hopes to solve this issue.
As more and more users turn to social media to get inspiration for fashion or beauty, providing a way to move from the point of discovery to the desired purchase in an instant will be crucial to turning clicks into revenue.
On top of announcing the new feature in Stories, Instagram also revealed in the blog that the number of daily users of Stories has now gone up to 300 million per day.