Instagram’s Dedicated Shopping App
Instagram is working on a new standalone app dedicated to shopping, according to The Verge. The app — which may be called IG Shopping — will let users browse collections of goods from merchants that they follow and purchase them directly within the app, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The app has no release date yet, and it’s possibly still very early in its development. While that means there’s a chance that we won’t even see it, the publication’s sources said Instagram is “well-positioned to make a major expansion into e-commerce.”
More than 25 million businesses already have Instagram accounts, and 2 million of them are advertisers, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on the company’s most recent earnings call.
Four in five Instagram users follow at least one business. Creating a standalone app would allow the company to provide a dedicated home for an increasingly popular activity on Instagram while also expanding opportunities for revenue.
It makes sense for the company to launch a dedicated shopping experience that can challenge e-commerce platforms like Shopify, seeing as a lot of businesses already maintain an Instagram account.
Earlier this year, the platform rolled out its shopping tools to eight countries, allowing more merchants to display their products’ prices on their posts.
A couple of months later, it gave some companies the ability to add electronic payments that would allow their followers to book appointments for restaurants or salons in-app. And this June, it started allowing some brands to sell products in Stories.
Instagram is also testing other experimental standalone apps, so it will not come as a surprise if it’s truly developing a shopping App.
Source: Engadget
