Social platforms are known as effective and simple e-commerce tools. Businesses across the globe have quickly adjusted to media. Now we can see that most brands have active profiles. These pages strive to meet a few major goals:
– To spread the word about the company
– To increase a brand’s social presence and recognition
– To promote products and services
– To drive more traffic to websites
– And, finally, to get a natural increase in sales
Can those goals be met with the help of networks? For sure, it looks like this tendency works well for most entrepreneurs. Particularly, Instagram seems to be making a sensation.
Why is Instagram so beneficial for businesses? Compared to other networks, Instagram gathers a large crowd of highly diverse users. In 2019, the number of active monthly users on this platform exceeded one billion. Moreover, among these users we have people from different continents, of different ages, with different interests, and so on. Now imagine that all your business’ potential customers are out there somewhere and all you need to do is reach out to them in the right way. Nothing else needs to be said to prove how useful this tool can be for marketing purposes, and now it can get even more beneficial after the company has introduced a new unique feature.
The checkout feature: what it is and why we need it
A few days ago, the Instagram team has officially reported the launch of a beta version of their new feature called checkout. This news has spread rapidly and caused many discussions on the Internet. It seems like everyone, including consumers, businesses, and marketers, are excited to welcome this update, and there are many reasons for that.
Although Instagram has previously provided opportunities for promoting and selling products, it always meant that a buyer needed to go to a brand’s website to find the product he liked. Now, the platform made a significant step in the direction of more time-efficient and convenient shopping. With the help of this feature, any business, be it a clothes store or a legit essay writer service assisting students with their writings, can now make publications with their products and sell them directly through Instagram.
What does it mean for e-Commerce?
Around 38% of people use Instagram multiple times in a day. They check out other people stories and publications, and they see lots of ads. Advertisement in social media works effectively thanks to the appealing multimedia that instantly drives attention and makes the user want to buy a specific product. But what happens next? The interested potential customer is redirected from the ad to the brand’s or store’s profile. In the profile, he can look at more products and find a link to the website. Then one needs to find the product of interest on the site and proceed to checkout. This takes quite a bit of time, which means that the first wow-effect may disappear.
If you are familiar with the marketing basics and, namely, the pull and push strategy, you should know that you have only a few seconds to capture the interest and encourage a client to make a purchase. If you fail to do this, a user can change his mind, and you will lose a customer. Now, imagine that all the additional links in this chain will be removed and a potential client will have an opportunity to pay for the product as soon as he sees it. It is convenient, it saves time, and it ensures that a user won’t lose the genuine interest in the advertised item. Thus, the new Checkout feature is a powerful tool that will help increase sales.
However, that’s not all. This feature is not just another way to sell products; it also offers quite a handy analysis tool. With its help, marketers can track the number of sales and estimated revenues made with every post. Thus, it is a massive step towards a smarter and better social media marketing.
What does it mean for users?
Checkout will bring benefits not only to businesses but also to consumers. Shopping on social networks has lately been quite complicated and time-consuming. With the newly introduced Instagram’s feature, the whole process becomes simple and intuitive. This will save regular users lots of time.
How does Checkout work?
The mechanism is pretty simple. A brand makes a publication with a picture of their product and tags it. A potential customer will see a small bag icon in the corner of such publications that indicates that there are some items available for purchase. Then, a person taps on the shop icon and chooses the items he likes. In a pop-up menu, a user can configure his order by selecting a suitable color or size and then proceed right to checkout.
Currently, the new feature is available only as a beta version. For a while, Instagram will be testing its efficiency with a small number of selected brands. However, we expect that soon Checkout will be available for all business accounts.
Final words
Although Checkout has just been introduced to the public, it already looks like a great e-Commerce solution. It brings lots of value not only to companies but also to regular users. Thus, we are looking forward to seeing the full version of this feature.
Author’s bio: Jilian Woods is a freelance journalist and a contributing writer with more than two years of writing experience. She finds her purpose in producing and sharing relevant content with people who are willing to expand their knowledge base and learn new things. Apart from her daily job, you may find Jilian engaged in volunteering or doing yoga.
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