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How To Sell On Instagram With Shopify In 05 Steps (+ Video Tutorial)

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As a merchant, if someone asked you whether you’d like to have an additional storefront in another location for free, you’d likely grab it with both hands.

Well, that’s exactly what Shopify and Instagram are offering to ecommerce merchants. While your online store may be doing well on its own, there’s absolutely no doubt that an additional Instagram business will help grow your sales.

It’s 100% free, simple to set up, and a no-brainer if you want to expand your channels. Here’s how to connect Shopify and Instagram, and why you should.

Outlines

I. How Does Instagram Shopping Work?

The Shopify and Instagram love story started in 2018 when Instagram launched Instagram Shopping. This was Instagram’s big move into the world of ecommerce and it basically works like this:

  1. Online merchants and influencers use product tagging feature to tag products. This can be in the Instagram feed or in the stories function above.
  2. Viewers of the picture click on the products they want to find out more about. This brings them to the Instagram storefront for the store selling the product.
  3. Those interested viewers buy directly from Instagram without leaving the app. Please note that, currently, this only works for U.S users; your users outside the States will have to click the ‘view on website’ button when looking at the product on your Instagram storefront.

how Instagram Shopping works

The 3-step process to tag products on Instagram posts. Image credit

Customers who are looking for your Instagram store directly can also find it on your page, either through the ‘view shop’ button or the shop icon.

Take an in-depth look into Instagram’s product tagging tools here.  

II. Sell On Instagram With Shopify: How Does It Work?

In short, to increase sales across both platforms.

We’re not talking about two separate online stores here. We’re talking about two traffic-driving, profit-generating sales channels that work really well together in reaching more customers and reducing the friction it takes for them to make a purchase.

Let’s take a look specifically at how Shopify and Instagram are becoming the Mo Salah and Sadio Mané of ecommerce partnerships.

2.1. Instagram on your Shopify Page

If you’re experiencing a bit of an Instagram following, one of the best elements you can have on your store is an Instagram feed.

This is an element that displays your store’s mentions in posts on Instagram. The pictures are laid out in a gallery that showcases your product and its happy buyers in a real-life context, which is absolutely amazing for social proof.

VIBE Shoppable Instagram Feed app helps you create beautiful shoppable Instagram feeds for your Shopify store to increase store visual and boost conversion rate. You can tag products in your photos and reels and let your customers shop directly from your Instagram content. Get started with the Free plan and unlock the selling power of your Instagram feeds.

Insta feed exampleA great Instagram feed by Mexicali Blues, with the hashtag that allows content customers to upload their own content.

Check out this article’s entire section devoted to adding Instagram feeds to your Shopify store below. 

2.2. Shopify on your Instagram Page

Instagram Shopping essentially lets you migrate your product catalog from your Shopify store to your Instagram business profile. Also, if customers have already bought something on your online store, or if they’ve abandoned a cart there, your Instagram page can help reel them back in for another visit.

  • Your Shopify Store on Instagram - By linking your Shopify store, Facebook Business account and Instagram Business account (we’ll show you how to do this later), all the products of your Shopify store will automatically be shown on your Instagram storefront. There’s also no need to design the storefront as Instagram has a set template that every store follows.
  • Retargeting Customers - If a customer visits your Shopify store and abandons a cart, you can set up a retargeting campaign on their Instagram that will try to attract them back. This is also the case for customers who have already bought on your store, as return buyers are much more likely to spend again and spend high.

There are some great apps to help you retarget customers on Instagram, such as Ako Retargeting and Flightplan.

Read more: How To Run Facebook Ads For Your Shopify Store

III. Shopify And Instagram: 05 Reasons Whys

You may still be wondering exactly why you should subscribe to the Shopify and Instagram partnership. Sure they work well together, but what’s in it for me?

Well, here are 5 additional reasons to get yourself and your store behind Shopify and Instagram.

3.1. A Whole New Audience

new traffic source for Shopify store

Instagram can be a great, and sometimes surprising, source of traffic for your business. Image credit

One of the big pluses of this beautiful ecommerce alliance is its potential to expand your customer reach.

You may have done a lot of the legwork for your store: established your goals, created a great buyer persona and figured out where your customers are hanging out the most. But customers can surprise you.

Regardless of who your target audience is, there’s bound to be potential buyers on Instagram that you never would have considered 

By having an Instagram storefront for your Shopify store, you’ll be in the domain of over 1 billion users. Around 30% of this audience are aged 18-24 and around 34% are aged 25-34, meaning there’s a lot of potentials to sell to a buying market.

3.2. Customers Looking to Shop

benefits of Shopify Instagram

Instagram users are often on the prowl for products. Image credit

And what incredible potential this buying market has.

Instagram has easily the best engagement rate of any social media platform at 1.22% (compare that to Facebook’s at 0.09%). This suggests that Instagram users are thorough users of the platform and heavily active when it comes to shopping.

Well, the fact that 80% of users follow at least one brand and 130 million people click on shopping posts every month definitely supports this.

In short, users want to shop. This is a categorical tick in the box if you’re at all dubious about connecting Shopify and Instagram.

3.3. More Ways to Find your Brand

Shop Tab instagram

The shop tab caters perfectly for an audience looking to shop.

We’ve already mentioned the main way that Instagram users find your products is through images, but how do they find those images?

There are plenty of avenues for potential customers to find your posts.

  • Instagram ads - These are Instagram’s traditional ads; the ones where you pay money to display a sponsored post on users’ Instagram feeds. 
  • Hashtags - These are the tags that you stick to your posts to get it found by people searching for those keywords. Someone searching for a #SuperheroLamp might search for that in the search box. If you’ve got that hashtag on your post, there’s a chance they’ll find it in the search results, which is a great source of organic traffic for your store.
  • Influencers - What would Instagram be without influencers? These are the people who’ll shout to the world about your amazing product. They’ll post images of your product either for payment (in the case of professional influencers) or to brag about a recent purchase (in the case of your loyal customers).
  • The Shop tab - This is Instagram’s newest feature and one of its biggest moves into the realms of ecommerce. Potential customers can click on the shop tag and find the products of brands they like. The recent posts of the brands will be in one long gallery, while another section below suggests individual products you might like from a range of stores.

Read more: Are you finding hot selling products in 2021. Here you can find top 20 ideas for your ecommerce store. 

3.4. Removing Friction

remove friction

Instagram Shopping gives your customers a straight line from interest to purchase. Image credit 

If you’re unfamiliar with friction in ecommerce, it refers to all the steps that a customer has to go through before they can make a purchase. The ideal shopping experience is a seamless slip-n-slide from product interest to product purchase.

And really, there should be as few steps as possible in between.

Connecting Shopify and Instagram is a great way to eradicate much of the friction your Instagram audience experiences.

If they’ve saved their buying and shipping details on the platform, customers looking to buy your product on Instagram Shopping can do so in as little as 3 clicks.

That kind of outrageous efficiency will see your cart abandonment rate plummet. 

3.5. More Links to your Store

more links to your store

Link to your Instagram storefront from multiple places on the platform.

If you’ve been building a following on Instagram for a while now, but are still frustrated with the tiny amount of Shopify traffic it brings, it’s quite possibly down to Instagram’s stringent link policy.

You’re probably all-too-aware that you’re only allowed one link on your Instagram’s business page. Harsh, we know, especially on a platform where users are actively looking to buy.

Well, the good news is that as long as you set up an Instagram Shop, you’ll be able to link to it as many times as you want on Instagram.

Of course, we’re not advocating spamming your followers with products, but a few strategic posts here and there can bring in more traffic than it previously could.

Sounds good? Let’s take a look at how to set it up…

IV. Video Tutorial: How to Set Up Instagram Shopping with Shopify

Check out our full video tutorial on how to connect your Shopify and Instagram accounts to start selling on both fronts.

  1. Set up your Facebook Business manager.
  2. Set up your Facebook page and Facebook shop
  3. Set up your Facebook Sales channels
  4. Set up your Instagram sales channel

After you’ve connected your Shopify and Instagram accounts, you can start tagging your products on Instagram. HubSpot have a great article and have made a great video about how to set up shoppable posts, which you can check out below.


V. How to Add Instagram Feed To Shopify? 

There’s a lot more you can get from the Shopify-Instagram partnership than just shoppable posts.

Instagram feeds on your Shopify page are one of the most powerful exponents of social proof, and social proof is one of the most powerful ways to improve your conversion rate.

What better promotion for your store can you have than an Instagram gallery of user-uploaded images? Not a lot, to be honest.

Not only do Instagram feeds improve trust in your product and store, they also help customers to see your product as a lifestyle choice with the potential to connect them to a community.

Powerful stuff, indeed. Here’s how to set up an Instagram feed on your Shopify store.

Step 1: Download an Instagram Feed App

instafeed app

Hosting an Instagram feed on your Shopify store is not something you can do with Shopify alone. You’ll have to enlist the help of a third-party app to boost your store’s social credit.

These apps let you link your products through Instagram hashtags. This means that any time a customer uploads a picture on Instagram using your specialised hashtag, it will be featured on the Instagram feed on your store.

So, step 1 is to get onto the Shopify App Store and check out the Instagram feeds available for download.

Our recommendation is for the best-rated app in that category - Instafeed.

Ultimately and of course, the choice is yours, but Instafeed has one of the most comprehensive plans we’ve seen for nurturing social proof:

  • Great-looking galleries that proudly display your UGC (user-generated content).
  • Lightboxes that display the full user-generated posts on your store, without the need to read them on Instagram.
  • Product tagging in feeds that links a ‘shop now’ button with the product featured in the Instagram post. Awesome for removing friction and improving site navigation.
  • Unlimited feeds, with the potential to place them on your home page, collections pages and individual product pages (Instafeed Plus plan only).
  • Hashtag segregation, which allows you to separate the pics you want from the pics you don’t (in case you’re using a generic hashtag that others might use for other purposes).

We’re going to be using Instafeed for the rest of this tutorial, but if you want to use another, rest assured that the following steps will basically be the same.

Step 2: Connect your Instagram Account

authorize Insta feed

With your chosen Instagram feed app downloaded, the next step is to connect your Instagram account to your Shopify store.

On Instafeed, simply click the ‘Connect an Instagram Account’ button.

add instagram to Shopify

Authorise your new Instagram feed app to have the necessary access to your profile info and media.

Step 3: Customise your Instagram Feed

customize insta feed

With your Instagram account connected to your Shopify store, you can set about customising the feed to look the way you want it to.

On Instafeed and many other Instagram apps on Shopify app store, this boils down to 4 fields:

  • Feed Title - This is the hashtag that will link customers’ UGC to your page. Any time a customer includes your feed title as a hashtag in their post, it will appear in your feed.
  • Post Spacing - The degree of separation that the images of the feed will have from each other.
  • On Post Click - The action that will happen when a visitor clicks on an image in your Instagram feed. This can either open the post in a pop-up lightbox on your store, on Instagram itself or just do nothing at all.
  • Number of Columns and Rows - How many UGC posts are displayed in columns and in rows.

Suggested reading: The journey of building a Shopify store is filled with joys and challenges, successes and failures, and affluence and lacking. But  what happens when you want to sell it? Here are all things you need to know before selling your Shopify stores

    Step 4: Add your Instagram Feed to your Shopify Page

    how to add instafeed to Shopify store

    • Head to the Shopify editor and head to the left-side menu.
    • Click on ‘add a section’ and choose ‘Instagram App’
    • Note that after clicking ‘add’, your Shopify Instagram feed won’t load automatically. You have to save your page first, then it should load.
    • Check that the lightbox is working by clicking on one of the images in your feed.

    And that’s it! Instagram feeds on your Shopify store’s pages can be a fantastic way to boost social proof and up your conversion rates through communal trust.

    Once you’ve established a Instagram feed on your store, you’ll need a way of displaying it proudly. You can also add Instagram Feed with a simple drag-n-drop action on PageFly using the built-in Instagram Feed element

    Not only that, With PageFly Landing Page Builder, you’re able to customise any one of 150+ elements however you want. Change the size, shape, border, margins; it’s completely up to you! 

    Make your Instagram feed loud, proud and prominent on your store with PageFly. Join 100,000+ active Shopify merchants in downloading PageFly for free.

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