Instagram is building its shopping features today the company made a announcement of three new product updates. Users will soon be able to shop videos they see in their feed save items to a specific “shopping collection” in their saved posts and also shop business profiles more easily. The features all point to Instagram creating a more fully formed experience where users can do a large portion of their shopping through the platform, just in time for the holidays this year.
The new shopping collection area in saved posts looks a lot like an online store, except with items you particularly like. The posts are all arranged in neat rows so you can scroll through whatever you saved in the event that you want to buy it now. You can do this through the usual bookmark tool.
Only certain posts are considered shopping posts on Instagram. Not every brand has opted into a business page that’ll allow them to sell through their profile. Instagram only recently allowed business profiles to tag their stories with products, and now they can do so with video posts in their feed, too. So truly, wherever users see an item they want to buy or learn more about, whether that be on the feed or through stories, they can click through to learn.
Those business profiles are also going through a slight redesign so all of their shoppable posts will be organized under a new shop button. That way, users can treat a business’ page more like a web store where everything is available to buy.
