How to sell on Instagram with Shopify and Instagram Shopping

The methods of buying and selling products have been evolving and changing in recent years. At this point, even social networks have become one of the fundamental places for advertising and the consequent purchase of products. Precisely for this reason, several social networks such as Facebook or Instagram have focused on enabling functions within them that lead directly to the purchase of products or to an e-commerce site.

This is the case, for example, of Instagram Shopping, an immersive full-screen showcase through which products can be sold directly on this social network, which is among the most used in the world today. In addition, it can be linked to your Shopify account and thus increase your sales even more.

In this article we will detail how to sell on Instagram with Shopify and Instagram Shopping.

What is Instagram Shopping?

Instagram Shopping, as already mentioned, is the online showcase through which companies can tell the story of their brand and promote the launch of their products. In fact, they can use a widely used and effective tool today, which is that of Instagram stories or feeds to obtain a financial profit, as well as advertising as an end in itself or to publicize their brand.

Also, by converting your Instagram profile into a business profile, you can add relevant information related to your business such as hours of operation, address, phone number and link to the website.

Finally, to link a product catalog to your business account, there are mainly three ways:

• Connecting an existing product catalog
• Managing a new catalog in the same way as you do in Facebook Business Manager, or
• Implementing the integration through your partners specialized in e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify or BigCommerce.

Let’s see now how to connect the Instagram shopping account with Shopify.

How to connect Shopify to your Instagram purchases?

First, make sure your business is in a supported country or region for this operation. Once you’ve verified this, you can start linking the products you have on Shopify to your Instagram business profile.

To start, the first thing you should do is validate that you have a Facebook business page and that you have added products to the corresponding catalog. Later, you can create your Facebook product catalog by setting up the Facebook Store.

At this point you can start managing your product catalog. To add a catalog of products that is already in Shopify and that you want to make visible also in the Purchases area of ​​your Instagram business profile, follow these simple steps:

• Open Instagram from your website or from the application installed on your device.
• Log in to the company account, using credentials or using the Facebook Business Manager account.
• Open the option of your company profile and go to the “Settings” section.
• Click on the option “Purchases” and then on “Edit profile”. If it asks you to confirm the link to your Facebook business page, accept the request.
• To continue, select the product catalog on the website [your store] .myshopify.com
• Finally click on “Save”.

After these steps, the product catalog will be added to your company page and your customers will be able to click directly on a photo or story, to go directly to the link of the product and, perhaps, buy it.