Shopping tags on Instagram for the Russian-speaking segment appeared in 2018. At first, they were only available in the US, only on iOS, and only for 20 select fashion brands. Instagram just invited them to test their new business tool – for free. At that time, the project had different working names: “Shoppable photos”, “Product tags”, and the like.

The essence of shopping tags is that they solve the eternal question: “Price in a personal, pzhlst!” Shopping tags in a few clicks redirect users from the product photo on Instagram to its card in your store.

The first click is needed so that the tags just appear on the image, the next one opens the product card. This way, shopping tags won’t clutter up the look of your photos.

In this article, we’ll show you how to set up your Instagram profile to use shop tags – to get even more traffic from it to your store. For this you will need: business accounts on Instagram and Facebook, Shop on Facebook with Product Catalog, and just a little patience.

At the moment, trade tags can be used in posts and stories.

Trade tags in posts

The function of using trade tags in Instagram posts works in the same way as tagging friends in pictures. It is important to remember these nuances:

1. On 1 photo, you can mark either only goods, or only people – you will not be able to mark both at the same time.
2. Publications with trade marks cannot be promoted … Maybe this opportunity will appear later.
3. No more than 5 product cards can be attached to one image.
4. Even statistics on tags is available, although it is still “lame”.

The work of trade tags in posts looks like this:

• Users first see a regular photo without any marks.
• If you click on the photo, the name of the product and its cost will appear.
• If you click on the name, a simplified version of the product card from your store appears – a kind of micro-landing page for the product on Instagram itself.
• If you click “buy”, you will be redirected directly to your online store.

Shopping tags in stories

Shopping tags appeared in Instagram Stories much later than in posts – in June 2018. It looks and functions exactly the same: no more than 5 products per 1 image and the same procedure to get from the product photo to its card in the store.

Only Instagram announced the possibility of making payments directly through the social network, without going to the store’s website.

Read also: How to increase store sales

First, you need to meet the requirements of this social network:

1. You must sell physical goods and follow Instagram’s trading rules (Trade Agreement, Trade Policy). Only goods, any services – completely by.
2. This feature is only available for activated and configured business accounts.
3. This business account must be linked to your Facebook page with a pre-configured Store and Product Catalog. Therefore, if you are still “playing” with the Facebook ad cabinet and its commercial interface, it is high time to study the tool thoroughly. After all, without your own store on Facebook, you still cannot use trade tags on Instagram.
4. This store must operate in a country where trade tags are officially supported. No country or age restrictions.

Only if you meet the first two points on the list can you move on and tackle the last two. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up your Facebook Store.

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Setting up a Facebook Store

As mentioned above, without a configured business account on Facebook with a Store and a Product Catalog, there is nothing to even think about using shopping tags on Instagram. This, in fact, is the main difficulty with connecting trade tags.

To have a tab called “Store” on your FB, you need to enable the “Purchases” template. To do this, go to the appropriate section in Settings:

And apply the Shopping template to display the page:

Add products to the Catalog

Next, you need to fill the Catalog of your Store with goods. There are two ways to do this:

1. Benefit from integration with partner platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce.
2. Use the “Business Manager” of Facebook itself and perform manipulations, as shown in the screenshot:
   

After creating the Catalog and choosing its name, assign it the type “Products” and click on the button “Create catalog”:

Then connect the Catalog you created to the “pixel” and do not forget to click on the “Save” button:

Loading the feed

Loading a feed is only necessary for those whose products are loaded from the site. When setting up a feed, it is better to do not a single, but a scheduled download of products at repeating intervals. So changes to products on the site will be automatically duplicated in the Catalog. How this is done is shown in the screenshot below.

After the feed is loaded, in the list of actions with your Catalog, select the “Store on Facebook page” option and click the “Connect page” button. Important: only 1 feed is uploaded to the Store! Categories will have to be done manually if you need them.

Finally, we select for which page the Store is created. To checkout, select the option to redirect the user to an external site:

We select the currency and press the cherished “Create a store”. Congratulations! You did it :). Just be patient – the social network will not download all the data at once and the goods will not appear in the Catalog instantly. The “Store” tab should appear on the profile page.

To connect multiple product catalogs to Instagram at once, select the “Instagram Shopping” option in the options for using it. She will definitely appear a little later:

Just slide the slider to the right:

Read also: How to promote an Instagram account

How to add shopping tags to Instagram posts and stories

It takes about 4 days to verify your profile. If everything was done correctly, you will receive a notification about the possibility of using trade tags.

On Instagram, when you add a post, you will have a button to tag products next to people tagging. After clicking it, all that remains is to select the desired product:

Conclusion

Shopping tags on Instagram are a useful business tool with which you can achieve tangible growth in traffic to your online store. This means – to increase the number of sales and the company’s income. The only pity is that after so much time, Shopping tags are still a rather “raw” product:

• posts with trade tags cannot be promoted;
• the number of products in the image is limited;
• you won’t be able to mark both people and goods at the same time;
• statistics are not fully functional;
• the audience is not yet used to tags.

However, for many brands, Instagram tagging is a great development opportunity that doesn’t require any financial investment. We advise you to implement the functionality of trade tags on your Instagram and evaluate its effectiveness yourself! 😉