Shopping on Instagram: Tag WooCommerce Products in Posts and Drive Traffic to Your Store

Escrito por Marina Pape on julio 31, 2018 Blog, Marketing.

You’re exploring whether Instagram and its one billion users can help grow your business, right?

If you have a WooCommerce store, you have even more Insta-opportunity: Shopping on Instagram makes it simpler than ever to move people from your photos to checkout.

Let’s leverage the power of Shopping on Instagram for your business!

Note: Shopping on Instagram is currently only available for physical products.

Unlock the Power of Shoppable Posts

Shopping on Instagram allows you to link photos on your Instagram account to products for sale by adding tags. It’s a natural fit for eCommerce stores:

1. Sell organically: It doesn’t always look or feel great to add prices and sales pitches to beautiful lifestyle images. Shopping on Instagram creates an immersive storefront with subtle, organic visual cues — look for the white shopping bag in the top right corner of posts, designed to show consumers a post is shoppable.

Shopping posts have a white shopping bag in the top right hand corner, which cues consumers that it is shoppable
Shopping posts have a white shopping bag in the top right corner, which indicates that products are shoppable.

2. Highlight product details. Shopping posts give consumers what they need in your Instagram feed. Tapping a post pulls up key information and prices, making consideration smoother.

3. Pave easy path to purchase. If someone decides they like your product, they can tap Shop Now to go directly to your store.

4. Supercharge discovery: Amy Cole, head of product development at Instagram, says the shopping tool aims to bring the “mindset of discovery” to businesses. Products find their way into the Search & Explore tab and in front of consumers you might never have reached otherwise.

In just three steps — see, tap, shop — everyone browsing Instagram can become your customers. 

Note: To be eligible for the Shopping on Instagram feature, you need an Instagram business accountThis requires approval, and certain countries are currently excluded. Learn more at: How to get approved for Shopping for Instagram.

How to Set Up Shopping for Instagram for WooCommerce

To use Shopping for Instagram, you need:

  • A WooCommerce store located in a Shopping for Instagram country
  • A Facebook page for your businesses
  • An Instagram business account

You first set up a Facebook page and catalog, from where Instagram fetches your inventory, not your live store.

Sign up or convert to an Instagram Business account, connect your Facebook product catalog, request approval for the Shopping feature, and presto!

Now it’s time to tag: Choose photos you want to feature, tag up to five products per image or up to 20 products per carousel, and add filters or captions.

For step-by-step instructions, check out our documentation on using Shopping on Instagram with WooCommerce.

Create at least nine shopping posts on your Instagram business profile to activate the Shop tab for your audience.

Making Smart Use of Instagram: HandBuilds

Handbuilds is a brand-new handmade leather goods business. Owner Rémi is using the Shopping on Instagram tagging feature to make sure his existing followers know his products are for sale!

How to Sell on Instagram with WooCommerce
HandBuilds is a brand new business already using Shopping for Instagram. It’s never too soon or too late to start tagging 🙂

Tips for Shopping on Instagram Posts

    • Tag multiple products to help your audience explore and browse
    • Use Instagram Stories to show your audience that they can now shop your posts
    • Leverage different shopping formats – tag a single image, or multiple images in a carousel
  • Ensure that each tag touches the correct product, so shoppers know which product the tag refers to

Leverage the power of Shopping on Instagram for your business

Marketing on Instagram isn’t for all businesses, but it works brilliantly for certain industries — particularly eCommerce — thanks to Shopping on Instagram!

If you decide to give it a try, leave us a comment and let us know how it goes. And remember to tag @WooCommerce in your Shopping posts so we can see what you’re up to!

cta-banner-10-product-page-v2_2x

27 Responses

  1. Jyoti Raghuvanshi
    julio 31, 2018 at 8:03 pm #

    The article says a lot, brands/people with a huge following on Instagram will be benefited a lot. Exploring WooCommerce and day-by-day learning more about it. Marina can you share more woocommerce resources?

    • Mobdro
      agosto 6, 2018 at 10:49 am #

      Yes, also need more woocommerce resources?

      • Marina Pape
        agosto 6, 2018 at 12:02 pm #

        Keep an eye on this blog!

  2. Mike davis
    agosto 3, 2018 at 2:42 pm #

    very helpful article to all instagram bloggers like me. gonna try this one.

  3. Noman
    agosto 4, 2018 at 7:03 am #

    I’m interested to use instagram platform.I hope this is the right time for me to target instagram user.I’m new to online marketing sill learning.I will apply your marketing strategy asap! anyways,thanks for your great tips

  4. Paulo
    agosto 4, 2018 at 1:54 pm #

    Congratulations on the article.
    Today, instagram is one of the fastest growing social networks in the world, especially when it comes to online sales in the organic.

  5. Dale Reardon
    agosto 4, 2018 at 3:42 pm #

    Great article and was all excited until read the Insta rules – only applies to physical products so we won’t be eligible unfortunately.
    Dale.

    • Marina Pape
      agosto 6, 2018 at 12:04 pm #

      Yes, that is an annoying limitation! I am going to add a note to the post calling this out, thanks for flagging that.

  6. John Collins
    agosto 5, 2018 at 12:16 am #

    Hi and thanks for this really helpful article.

    I do have a question though, like Shopify, is there a way in WooCommerce to export products to Facebook Boutique to then be able to export catalogue to Instagram ?

    Thank You !

    • Marina Pape
      agosto 6, 2018 at 12:04 pm #

      Hi John. You can use the free Facebook for WooCommerce extension to export products to Facebook and create a shop page: https://woo.com/products/facebook/ 🙂

  7. Wade
    agosto 6, 2018 at 3:06 pm #

    I saw this on Instagram a week ago. I thought “how are they doing that?”, and then I saw this article. I’m still new to WooCommerce, but am learning quickly. Looks like with a little tweaking on Facebook, this can be a possiblity rather quickly. Now I guess I need an Instagram account for my biz lol..

    • Marina Pape
      agosto 9, 2018 at 9:49 am #

      Hi Wade! Welcome to WooCommerce 🙂 You might want to check out our new store owner guide: https://woo.com/guides/new-store/. Also, depending on where you are in the world, perhaps there is a WooCommerce meetup near you to meet some folks with stores? https://woo.com/meetups/ Good luck! 😀

  8. pinkcashmere18
    agosto 7, 2018 at 5:41 am #

    Hello, I just set up my Instagram for product tags. But I don’t want my product tags to take you to the Facebook store. I want it route the potential customer to my website. Its a woo commerce store. Please help me.

    • Marina Pape
      agosto 9, 2018 at 10:01 am #

      Hi there!. Within Facebook, you are able to to define the “purchase url”: http://cld.wthms.co/Q9l1t0. It doesn’t have to be on FB, you link it to any site/url you choose – including your WooCommere store 🙂

      • Brent
        agosto 20, 2018 at 4:10 am #

        I’ve attempted to activate several WordPress Instagram integration plugins to build and refresh the product catalog in Facebook, but cannot seem to get them to work. Like Pinkcashmere mentioned, it would be ideal to direct traffic to the woocommerce checkout, and in my case, for variations in product color, size, gender, etc. Is there a tutorial or credible resource that we can hire to integrate this functionality?

  9. Fred
    agosto 7, 2018 at 8:44 pm #

    Will it be possible to create a page on my site of my Instagram feed with posts that shows products from my Woocommerce store?
    There’s big ecommerce stores that add a link on their bio which shows a page with all the products that appears on their feed.

    If would be great to have something like this.

    • Marina Pape
      agosto 9, 2018 at 9:50 am #

      Hi Fred. Yes, I think what you’re talking about is the shop tab. If you create at least nine shopping posts on your Instagram business profile it will auto-activate the Shop tab for your audience.

  10. Hena
    agosto 9, 2018 at 12:14 pm #

    Very well explained. I would love to share it on my network.

  11. Balto
    agosto 11, 2018 at 6:19 pm #

    In what regions is this available?

  12. bd
    agosto 12, 2018 at 8:07 am #

    gonna try this one.

  13. Sofia
    agosto 12, 2018 at 7:33 pm #

    Hi, when tagging products on Instagram, it says I have 4 products but only shows 2 of them. Woocommerce has synched fine with Facebook. What isn’t showing on Instagram are the 2 variants of the products. It used to, but latest Woocommerce update seems to have stopped it working properly. What can I do?

    • Marina Pape
      agosto 14, 2018 at 5:33 pm #

      Hmm, that’s strange. If you can open a support ticket via info at woocommerce dot com, they will be able to point you in the right direction!

  14. Aman
    agosto 13, 2018 at 6:56 am #

    Good idea for increase sale and traffic

  15. Neelkanth
    agosto 22, 2018 at 8:46 am #

    Okay, this really looks interesting. In fact affiliate market people can also implement this idea. Though your sells will depend on the level of creativity.
    Present most of the sites have been hit by Medic update, so Seo Experts should also learn about different techniques to drive traffic. Surely this could be it for the initial boost to recover from the update.
    Really appreciate the effort for this blog post.

  16. kseniavo
    agosto 29, 2018 at 3:54 am #

    Hi Marina! Great article! I wonder if you’d have insight on my challenge — I’ve gone through all the steps: I have an IG business profile, my associated Facebook page has a Shop with approved physical goods, my Business Manager account/catalog is connected directly to my personal Facebook account which owns the Business Facebook Page. It’s been several days but I’m still not seeing Shopping approval from IG. Is there someone to reach out to for support in this case? Thank you in advance!

  17. ampitupmedia1
    agosto 29, 2018 at 4:40 am #

    Instagram works well when your business relies upon visual appearances to market. Fashion, home decor and photography have all done well for me when I marketed them on Instagram.

    Nice write-up,

    Rich