Instagram Rolls Out Additional E-Commerce Features

Thursday, October 3, 2019 - 10:24 by Graham Miller

Image and video sharing app Instagram has been tying in services which allow advertisers and influencers to market products more effectively to its huge user base, with its latest update putting safe shopping online even higher on the agenda.

Internet Retailing reports that a solution known as ‘product drop’ is being tested out at the moment, with the intention being to roll it out more widely once any issues have been ironed out.

This service essentially allows brands to promote the launch events and release dates of their products, tying these in with Stories and automating the process of allowing users to set reminders about these new arrivals so that they can be amongst the first to snap them up.

In its explanation of product drop, Instagram argued that since its service is all about forming trends and defining tastes, it made sense to create this tool to bring benefits to users and advertisers alike.

A number of big names are already signed up to put this feature through its paces, with companies such as H&M and Net-A-Porter amongst those listed. This means that there will likely be a firm focus on clothing and accessories in the short term, which makes sense given the extent to which the audience for these products is engaged through Instagram.

It seems inevitable that in the long term the product drop feature will be used to help sell even more types of products to Instagram users, with launch events for gadgets likely to make effective use of it to spread the word.

Instagram is also keen to offer this service as a means of drumming up interest in time-limited offers as well as exclusive product promotions which will not be available elsewhere, giving it the edge over other e-commerce platforms in the process.