All the ways Instagram is making it even easier for you to shop on the app

Get ready to spend on social 
ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images
Amelia Heathman16 November 2018

Instagram is introducing a raft of shopping features to make it easier than ever to shop from your social media feed.

The new features will allow brands to tag products in videos, so you can shop the specific product you want from a video.

You will also be able to shop via a brand’s profile. Your favourite brands will soon have a Shop tab included on the main profile, so you can purchase a specific product directly.

This also saves trawling through different posts to find the right product, as they will all be neatly collected in one place.

You can now shop products in videos on Instagram
Instagram

Finally, Instagram users are going to get their own shopping tab on the app, in the form of Shopping collection. This is like the ASOS saved items tab, but on Instagram. Using this feature you can save products you see on Instagram, either something a brand has tagged in a post or in a video, and store them in your collection to go back to and purchase at a later date.

This works the same way as the current saved posts section on the app.

Instagram is going full-throttle on shopping this year. In September, it added the opportunity to shop products through stickers on Stories, as well as a dedicated shopping channel in Explore.

It’s interesting that the company is adding all these features to the main Instagram app, considering it is rumoured to be working on a standalone shopping app, called IG Shopping.

According to The Verge, the app would allow Instagram users to browse collections from merchants and stores they follow and purchase products directly in the app.

How the new Shop tabs will look on Instagram
Instagram

By incorporating these shopping features into the main app, Instagram is proving there probably isn’t a need for a separate app. Considering it has five apps already, including Boomerang and its long-form video app IGTV, we say that’s a sensible idea.

Instagram is already pretty dangerous for your bank balance, according to research by Barclays which found that the average young Brit spends almost £400 a year as a result of social media posts.

The new Instagram shopping features will be coming to your feed soon, so be prepared to spend.

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