Instagram has introduced a trio of new ecommerce features today — perhaps most notably for influencers, an integration whereby users can directly shop video posts on the grid.
The additions arrive just in time for the frenzied holiday shopping season, per The Verge. The other two features are: the ability to save items to a ‘Shopping Collection’ within the app, and a more seamless shopping experience for business profiles.
Shoppable videos are not available to all users (yet), The Verge reports, but only to certain brands that have opted into creating business profiles. Select business accounts are currently piloting the feature, and can therefore tag their video posts with stickers — featuring a shopping bag icon — that viewers can click to learn more or purchase. Shoppable tags launched on Instagram Stories in September.
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The new Shopping Collection within users’ profiles looks like an online store, per The Verge — albeit one that has been personally curated. And finally, business profiles on Instagram have undergone a redesign so that all shoppable posts are now organized under a new ‘Shop’ button.
Instagram currently counts 25 million business profiles, according to Mashable, and does not currently take a cut of any sales that are transacted via any of its ecommerce tools — though it does vend shoppable ads.
