Why Instagram Checkout may be the forerunner of the one-stop retail experience
Instagram’s announcement this week it was launching an in-app shopping capability illustrates how the retail customer experience is evolving far beyond the physical store and e-commerce realm and taking increasingly deeper root within mobile device and social media environments.
It also reflects how non-retail entities, such as social media channels, are increasingly tapping the lucrative consumer opportunity. While clearly a boon for shoppers, the photo sharing app’s shopping strategy will also very likely present additional challenges for retailers and brands given it’s yet another consumer touchpoint and a purchase channel consumers expect to be seamless and rewarding.
But, as one expert said, the in-app approach also provides brands something they didn’t have prior with Instagram-driven traffic — valuable data.
«As Instagram is becoming a key player in product discovery, offering native checkout makes the mobile buying experience seamless,» Laura Musa, director of channel solutions for digital marketing performance agency Adlucent, told Retail Customer Experience in an email.
«Previously, shoppers would find a product they liked on Instagram, track it down on the brand’s website, go through the checkout process, and then fumble with entering credit card info and filling out other tiny fields on the go. Or, they would save it for later and likely never go back to complete the checkout process. Oftentimes, tracking was lost, so brands didn’t know where that shopper discovered them, which made decisions to invest in channel content and advertising more difficult. In-app checkout solves for these challenges and evolves the shopper-social connection even further.»
The Instagram shopping journey
Instagram’s shopping journey started in 2016, when Instagram integrated a shopping feature into its app (shopping tags). The tags helped users get deeper product info but the user was forced to a brand’s website via a browser to buy the item.
At the time, Instagram told Recode it didn’t want to be «in your [users’] face,» when it came to making a retail transaction take place. At that point the Facebook-owned photo/video social sharing site was just focused on making product discovery and product purchase a bit easier and more seamless for its users.
Now, with Instagram Checkout, which went live March 19, Instagram is definitely in the faces of consumers by melding discovery and purchase.
To use Checkout, an Instagram member stores a credit card or PayPal data and a shipping address within Checkout. The app also lets shoppers initiate returns, cancel orders and get shopping support, according to a blog post from Instagram’s Business Team.
«People told us that they wanted more time and space before buying so we made it easy to save and share products,» stated the blog post. «As we’ve continued to invest in shopping, we’ve heard feedback from our community that they want to do even more.
«Checkout enhances the shopping experience by making the purchase simple, convenient and secure. People no longer have to navigate to the browser when they want to buy. And with their protected payment information in one place, they can shop their favorite brands without needing to log in and enter their information multiple times.»
The big picture
Moving forward, the Instagram Checkout strategy will likely quickly evolve and transform the consumer journey and drive the impetus for retailers to deliver better customer experiences.
Steve Gershik, CMO at product information management company inRiver, also expects Instagram Checkout to be the kicking off of a new shopping experience in itself.
«With the rise of brands that have used social media promotion almost exclusively to gain traction, Instagram’s new checkout ability and the use of the platform as an online marketplace has been a long time coming,» Gershik told Retail Customer Experience in an email.
«Eventually — and probably sooner than marketers are ready for — we will have the ability to take this to the next level through adaptive merchandising, which will allow brands to visually show, through ads, how their products will fit into a particular consumer’s lifestyle. With the rise of artificial intelligence, the technology will soon exist for a smartphone to track its user’s eye movements, dwell time and pupil dilation — all things that indicate interest,» he said.
Those capabilities will let retail marketers deliver the right information at the right time — creating a more rewarding, seamless customer experience.
It will also, he said, solidify «marketing platforms like Instagram as one-stop shops for product information.»
