Months after gaining traction from over 300 million daily active users, Instagram Stories will now start selling products. The fresh development has expanded the shopping experience on Instagram as previously its feed was exclusively serving ads to let customers buy new products without leaving the photo-sharing platform. The Facebook-owned company will show stickers with a shopping bag icon on products featured in a story. Shopping on Instagram has been evaluated for a long time to make it a profitable social media model. Particularly, Instagram Stories, which arrived as a Snapchat-inspired feature back in August 2016, had started attracting businesses in just one year after its launch.
Select international brands, such as Adidas, Aritzia, and Louis Vuitton, will receive the shopping feature on Instagram Stories at the initial stage, though it is expected to roll out to regular users in the coming future. There will be a sticker with a shopping bag icon that users need to tap to see more details about the product featured in a story.
"Today we're beginning to expand shopping beyond Feed to Instagram Stories," Instagram said in a blog post.
Citing a recent survey conducted by MetrixLab, Instagram highlights that its users often watch stories to stay in-the-know with brands they're interested in, get an insider view of products they like, and learn about new products that are relevant to them. This is apparently the prime reason behind the new development. However, the company also claims that brands are among the early adopters of its story model and create some of the most viewed and engaging content on the platform.
Last month, Instagram added the ability to let users share posts from different public accounts right within their stories. An APK teardown of the Instagram app was also spotted to have a feature to add music stickers to stories to enhance the user experience.
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