Whether or not your brand does big business on Instagram, the holidays are always a beneficial time to open up potential avenues for sales.
With an Instagram shop, users of the app can make purchases from you without ever leaving the platform, easing the amount it takes from discovery to purchase. Even with potential customers who don’t make it to that final stage right away, putting product in front of them can spread brand awareness.
Instagram’s business account (@instagramforbusiness) has been busy helping brands ready their digital storefronts for the holidays—the platform, obviously, benefits from in-app sales, so it wants brands to be successful. It recently posted a short tutorial on creating product collections within your shop.
“Collections allow your customers to shop your recommended products through different categories and themes,” Instagram wrote. “You can also tag collections across your feed, stories, and Reels to boost visibility.”
The action itself is fairly intuitive—a business account that has set up a shop would click “create set” on the Commerce Manager page. The harder part might be deciding what to include in the collection. Should a brand display its latest releases in the collection? A trending style sure to captivate fashion-forward consumers? How about a particular category, like birthstones?
Fortunately it appears that shops can post more than one collection, but choose wisely—too many might overwhelm a customer, and highlighting one or two collections consistently will ensure more time for consumers to see them.
Instagram offers three (pretty good!) suggestions for those needing inspiration:
holiday best sellers, “best gifts for your best friend,” and “surprises for your sweetheart.” These won’t suit every brand, but they do get the ball rolling—and the sooner brands update their shops, the better.
(Image via @instagramforbusiness)
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