The Instagram platform allows business owners and sellers to create a store on it for free and start displaying and selling products through it to customers, through its application via smartphones only, this feature is not available through the browser.
This is while providing all the capabilities that enable sellers to display their products professionally to attract customers and provide them with the opportunity to explore and purchase products directly through Instagram.
Where your product catalog is integrated with your account as a seller on Instagram to start creating marketing content for your audience and use the mechanisms of the marketing process available on Instagram such as stories, images, rails, hashtags, stickers, and other effective methods to increase sales.
Therefore, having an online store on Instagram is a great tool for business owners, and many of them rely on it to get the many benefits of creating an online store on Instagram.
Benefits of creating an online store on Instagram
Instagram is a social platform dedicated to sharing photos and short videos, whether for personal or business accounts.
Which can be used to develop your business by creating an online store on Instagram. These features enable you to:
1. Promote the growth of your business in the commercial market and create an advantage among your competitors: because you will provide a unique shopping process for your customers through Instagram, take them with a click of a button to your store on the web or even browse and review products on Instagram and choose the right product and price so that they can complete the purchase process through their platform Favorite.
2. Increase Your Conversion Rate: The conversion rate of your leads to actual customers will increase due to the use of various marketing features which are a strong factor in attracting customers.
3. Easy access to a large target audience: Statistics indicate that the number of Instagram users daily is more than 500 million around the world and that 70% of these users explore products and brands through Instagram.
4. Save time and effort in managing the store: it is managed through the Instagram application on the phone, so you start adding posts and stories, following up on comments and messages, and responding to them directly.
5. Raising brand awareness: Instagram business accounts have more advantages than personal accounts, helping business owners to develop and promote their business such as:
- Insights about followers and post-performance.
- Reach more customers interested in what you offer through hashtags and rails.
- Add a contact button to your profile to make it easier for customers to communicate with you.
- Display products in more than one way, whether images, rails, stories, or sponsored ads.
- And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the benefits that will accrue to you from creating an online store on Instagram, which is why we advise you to do this immediately.
This is whether you have a physical store on the ground, for example, a shop that sells handmade products, or you have an online store on an e-commerce platform.
Advantages of creating an online store on Instagram
There are many advantages that you will get from creating an online store on Instagram, especially:
1. The feature of tagging the product image: Tag Products: It shows the name of the product and its price, so you can put more than one tag for each image if it contains more than one product, then 5 product tags can be placed in each image, story, publication and videos.
2. Product stickers: It is one of the advantages of Instagram. It is a sign that appears in the form of a shopping bag when your customer clicks on it. Product details such as specifications, price, and product link appear on your web store, and the customer can complete the purchase process through it. These stickers are also used in pictures and clips. Video and stories.
3. Promotions: You can put up promotions and make campaigns funded for your products and your store on your account.
4. Bio: You can add a 150-character bio to describe your store and brand, so make sure that this description is clear, concise, and shows your store’s specialization. You can also add your original store website on the website or Facebook, and add some hashtags related to your niche.
5. Custom groups: You can divide the store’s products into classified groups. If a store specializes in selling electronic games, you can create a group dedicated to the PlayStation, another for Xbox, another for Nintendo, and another for gaming accessories. You can also add hashtags to each group of products.
But before you create your online store on Instagram, you must first familiarize yourself with the conditions for creating an online store on Instagram, which we will discuss shortly.
Terms of creating an online store on Instagram
In order to be able to display and sell products on your Instagram store, your account must meet some conditions, and make sure that it is eligible to create a store.
These conditions are:
1. Make sure that the geographical area in which you will be located supports the feature of creating a store via Instagram and you can make sure that you are in an acceptable geographical area easily.
2. You need to have a credible professional account, that is, interact with the public, publish consistently on Facebook and Instagram, and have a large number of followers for your brand.
3. To have a store on Facebook that integrates with an online store on e-commerce platforms such as Shopify or WooCommerce, so that you can import product data through it.
4. That you have read the terms and policies for creating an online store on Instagram, the advertising policies, the merchant agreement, and the terms of use before starting to create the store.
Steps to create an online store on Instagram
Distance finishing the point of conditions, and making sure that you are allowed to create your online store on Instagram, you will have to create it already.
Here, we offer you the steps that will allow you to create an online store for you on Instagram with ease through your mobile phone, as it is only available on it and not on the browser version of Instagram.
Step 1: Create a business account on Instagram
At first, you need to set up your account to be a business account, so do the following steps:
1. Log in to the Instagram platform through your actual account or create a new account for yourself, and then convert this account from a personal to a business account.
You can do this by entering the settings and choosing to convert to a professional business account, or even by clicking on Edit Profile from your profile and then:
2. Choose a category that describes your activity (most likely it will be a product or service).
3. Click on the Business option for sellers and commercial activities. This option helps the public to find you when they search for your products of interest to them. When they press Agree, your profile will become public to the public, anyone can see your posts and you won't have to agree to follow requests.
4. Review the contact details of your business, such as contact number, email, business address and the domain of your store.
Second Step: Submit a Store Creation Request
This step is done by submitting a request to Instagram management to review your data and approve the creation of the store.
It is done through the following steps:
1. Click on the Settings panel.
2. Click on a business option.
3. Choose the Instagram Shopping setting.
4. Link your Facebook account to Instagram, but if you have done this step previously, you can press Continue.
After this, Instagram will offer you to link your account to the Facebook account of your activity, choose your account and complete this step to move to the next step.
Third Step: Register for the Instagram Shopping feature
It is a feature that enables you to link your store on Instagram with a product catalog for your online store on the web, where this store is the source of the products displayed in your Instagram store.
You can import the catalog from Shopify:
- Or you can import the catalog from WooCommerce:
- Or you can import the catalog from Big Commerce:
- Or you can import the catalog from Magento:
If you do not have a web store, you can create a catalog, add products to it, and then submit it for review by the application administration, and a notification will be sent to you when your email is approved.
Fourth Step: Connect your Instagram store to your website:
In this step, you will enter your online store in order to complete the creation of your store on Instagram.
- Then you will submit your store to be reviewed by Instagram.
- Your store will then be reviewed.
Fifth Step: Set up the store and activate the purchase process:
After receiving the approval notification to create the store, comes the step of setting up and activating the store:
- Go to the Settings menu and then click on the Shop option.
- Select the catalog of products you want to add to your store.
- Use Commerce Manager to manage your store's catalog. It enables you to get insights into customers' preferences for products, select a payment method that best suits customers, manage orders and view returns.
- After you've done the previous steps and got approval to create your store, set it up and activate buying on it, you're now ready to use different strategies to market your products.
Also Read: How to Profit from Instagram (Practical Explanation of 8 Different Methods)
Instagram Marketing Strategies
Instagram is one of the leading social media applications that have a great ability to communicate ideas, feelings and marketing messages to the audience.
Below, we will learn about the Instagram strategies that guarantee the success of your online store and promote the growth of your business:
Strategy One: Use Hashtags
This strategy is used in posts to enable users to explore content through keywords preceded by a # sign, which are mostly keywords through which the audience explores products and services.
You can create a special hashtag in the name of your store or the products you display through it, you make it easier for the audience to follow you through this hashtag.
One of the best practices is to use 5 to 10 hashtags in a single post, whether a story, rails or image, to reach more users.
Read also: How to make a store to sell products on Facebook (steps and secrets)
The second strategy: Rely on Reels
The Instagram platform launched the Rails feature, similar to Tik Tok, which are videos ranging in length from 15 to 60 seconds.
These clips allow users to record short video clips with different audio clips, use filters and modify images.
You can use this feature to educate your audience about your store and your products and their importance, as it is a great way to attract the attention of the audience, who prefer to get information in the shortest possible time.
You can create Rails clips explaining to the audience how to request products or quick discounts and offers while including an invitation to make a purchase decision such as (Don't miss the offer, buy now).
Strategy Three: Stories
Stories or Instagram Stories is a feature that enables you to post photos or videos about your store that will be visible to customers for only 24 hours.
The feature of Stories is that it is used by 500 million users on a daily basis and it allows you to post photos and add effects.
It is also considered a more effective way than images because it receives more views and interactions from the audience, and you can increase the views and interactions of your stories by receiving audience questions about your products and the ability to share and answer them in the same stories.
Fourth strategy: Exploiting sponsored ads
Sponsored ads are one of the marketing strategies supported by the majority of social media platforms. As an online store owner on Instagram, you can target your audience according to age, gender, place and interests.
It is an advertising method for marketing products through stories, rails and publications. It also has many benefits, as it is a key factor in achieving your marketing and sales goals and increasing the number of followers of your store.
Fifth Strategy: Influencer Marketing
Collaborating with influencers is one of the indirect marketing methods that you can use in promoting your products and store, and it is a very effective way to convince the customer and make them take a serious step toward you.
Many business owners use this strategy because it has a high potential to persuade the public, spread awareness and promote products and ideas.
The success of this strategy also depends on choosing influential personalities who provide content related to your commerce field and have a large number of followers who are influenced by them and the content they provide, so they will turn out to be your followers and have a strong motivation to become your actual customers.
Sixth Strategy: Marketing with competitions
It is a feature that many beginners in any field rely on, which is to establish activities through posts or stories based on audience interactions and used by many in order to activate their accounts and get a larger number of followers.
Inviting them to participate in the competition with the aim of increasing the number of followers, marketing your products and store, and increasing interaction on the account.
Contests are one of the most popular methods that are applied via Instagram, as they depend on providing simple gifts such as discounts or in-kind gifts in exchange for audience interactions.
Seventh Strategy: User Generated Content
Instagram is primarily an image-based platform while designing high-quality images on a tool like Canva or others helps you get more interaction from customers.
However, another thing that can help you achieve better results is encouraging customers to create their own content and images of you.
This can be done in different forms, for example, if we assume that you own a store that sells beauty and hair care products.
You can request photos from customers before and after using the products and share them with the public, which increases their confidence in your products and leads to increased sales.
Strategy 8: Spreading through Messaging and Chat
Messaging and chatting is an important feature that enables you to communicate with the audience directly, and it has been improved to help respond and quickly communicate with customers.
They provide several advantages to shop owners when using them:
- Direct reply through the application without the need to go to another application or to the inbox to respond to correspondence.
- Quick Send is a feature that enables you to share content directly with your target audience or add content to your story.
- The ability to create surveys in a group chat with a group of customers about the products they prefer or the appropriate prices.
1. Determining and sharing your geolocation on your profile increases the number of followers and your store gets 5% more interactions and shares when geolocation.
2. Use video editing apps when creating any videos you post on your account to promote your store.
3. Maintaining audience attraction by posting on a daily basis the latest products, price reductions and offers available to get audience interaction and ensuring that they see your publications and thus increase your sales, and using publishing scheduling tools.
4. Instagram is not as strongly dependent on textual content as visual content, but you must include strong phrases that motivate your followers and audience to make a purchase decision.
We recommend that you read the article 7 Tips for Successful Content on Instagram, which will help you provide successful content on Instagram that will enable you to reach your sales and marketing goals.
5. Use the insights of followers and posts on Instagram Insights to track your progress, analyze the efforts you have made, and know the results that have been reached
Frequently asked questions about creating an Instagram store
1. How to create an online store on Instagram?
You can create your online store on the Instagram platform through only 5 steps, which we mentioned in detail in the article, which are in short:
- Create a business account on Instagram.
- Linking a Facebook store to an Instagram store.
- Submit a request to the application management to create a store.
- Register for the shopping feature.
- Store setup and purchase activation.
2. What are the conditions for opening an online store on Instagram?
There are some necessary conditions that must be met in order to be able to create your online store on the Instagram platform, which are:
- Ensure that the Instagram Shop feature is supported in your target geographic region.
- A credible professional account with a large number of followers on Instagram.
- An Instagram store is integrated with a web store so that the product catalog can be imported to Instagram through it.
- View the merchant agreement, terms and policies for creating a store on Instagram.
3. What are the most important Instagram marketing strategies?
There are some marketing strategies that may help you succeed on Instagram, the most important of which are:
- Use hashtags.
- Rely on Reels.
- Stories.
- Exploit sponsored ads.
- Influencer Marketing.
- Competition Marketing.
- User-Generated Content.
- Spreading through messaging and chatting.
Conclusion
Instagram is one of the important social media platforms in the world of e-commerce, which helps owners of online stores around the Internet to get a lot of sales and new customers.
In this article, we have covered the creation of an online store on Instagram from all the aspects that you may need to know.
In the end, we hope that you have benefited and enjoyed the article. If you have any questions or inquiries, ask us in the comments box and we will respond to them as soon as possible.