How to Set Up Your Instagram Shop

1. What is an Instagram Shop?
2. What are the benefits of an Instagram shop?
3. What requirements are there to set up an Instagram shop?
4. How much does an Instagram Shop cost?
5. How do you set up an Instagram Shop? What steps are necessary?
6. What happens if the Instagram Shop was denied?
7. How can you sell via the Instagram Shop?

Instagram has long been more than just a private photo platform: The promotion of products and brands has firmly established itself in the social media cosmos. No wonder, as companies want to place their offers exactly where their customers are already: directly on the platform. With the setup of its own Instagram shop, even the purchase process can be completed in the app, making shopping even more lucrative for both customers and companies.

In this article, we explain what an Instagram shop is, what advantages it offers and what you should keep in mind when setting it up. We will also give you a step-by-step guide and show how you can effectively advertise the products in your Instagram shop.

Table of contents

1. What is an Instagram shop?

2. What are the advantages of an Instagram shop?

3. What requirements are there to set up an Instagram shop?

4. How much does an Instagram shop cost?

5. How do you set up an Instagram shop? What steps are necessary?

6. What happens if the Instagram Shop was denied?

7. How can you sell via the Instagram Shop?

What is an Instagram Shop?

With an Instagram shop, users can purchase products directly through posts and stories on Instagram. Instagram itself describes its own shop as a kind of "shop window" for companies. As a company, you can present, market, and even sell your own products via the platform with an indexed product catalog.

On product detail pages, all important information about your products, such as price and description, can be stored. In addition, images in which your products have already been tagged on Instagram will also appear.

Features such as the thematic grouping of products into "collections" make browsing and shopping even more pleasant for users. Companies, in turn, can use this to respond to trends, new products and seasonal events to remain relevant.

To make the payment process as simple as possible, your customers are not sent from the product detail page to a website, but can complete the purchase directly on Instagram.

What are the benefits of an Instagram shop?

With an Instagram shop, products can be presented in a more personal way than through a simple website marketing. Especially the aspect of storytelling, i.e. telling a story around the products, makes them more tangible and interesting for potential customers. Further advantages of an Instagram Shop are:

• Integration of product images from the community
• Simple staging of your own products
• Focus on relevant information
• Direct visibility of prices
• Reduction of friction losses because customers can buy products directly in the Instagram app
• Facilitation of shopping for customers
• Uniqueness of products can quickly be highlighted with creative stagings
• Creation of wishlists so that customers can later directly return to their desired products
• Reaching customers in private: Instagram as a leisure app leads customers directly into online shopping. This allows them to be reached where they are anyway and the inhibition threshold to buy decreases when the users can remain in the app where they are currently.
• Linking influencers to the shop means direct traffic in the app

What requirements are there to set up an Instagram shop?

The Instagram shop is linked with Facebook. If you as a company want to sell something on Facebook's e-commerce platforms, your Facebook account, your Facebook page or your professional Instagram account must meet the following requirements:

1. Adherence to Facebook guidelines:This includes the Facebook Terms of Use, the Commercial Terms of Use and the Community Standards which must be accepted and adhered to. Specifically for Instagram these are the Instagram Terms of Use and the Instagram Community Guidelines. If these guidelines are violated, Facebook will respond by blocking access to Facebook's e-commerce platforms and disabling the offending account.
2. Representation of your company and your domain:In your professional Instagram account, product advertisements for direct purchase via your website must be included. If you as a seller want to redirect buyers on Facebook's e-commerce platforms to a website in a supported market, you agree to provide Facebook with the individual, untrimmed domain through which you sell. In addition, your professional Instagram account must represent the store or website that is linked with the mentioned domain. To verify if you are the owner of the domain, Facebook may ask you to undergo a domain verification procedure.
3. The company is located in a supported market:In order to use Facebook's e-commerce platforms, your Instagram account must be within one of their supported markets. You can find out which ones they are here.
4. Trustworthiness:The Instagram account must appear trustworthy. This trustworthiness can be achieved, for example, through an authentic and established presence or through a large number of subscribers.
5. Provision of reliable information and compliance with "Best Practices":It must be ensured with the product information that it does not contain misleading price information or erroneous availability information. Refund and return policies must also be clearly written out and made easily accessible. This is to ensure the protection of consumers.

How much does an Instagram Shop cost?

The setup and management of an Instagram shop is free. All that is required is a professional Instagram account and a linked Facebook profile.

How do you set up an Instagram Shop? What steps are necessary?

Step 1: Set up Instagram Business Profile

For this step, the above-mentioned guidelines of Instagram must be adhered to. To convert an existing account into a business profile, you open the settings on Instagram and select the menu item "Accounts". In the "Linked accounts" section, you can log in with your Facebook account and thus complete the setup of your business profile. When linking with your company profile on Facebook, you should note that you must also have the administrative rights to the Facebook account.

Step 2: Set Up Business Manager Account

To set up a shop in the Commerce Manager, you first need to register on business.facebook.com with your email address for a Business Manager account. The Business Manager enables you to manage your ad accounts, pages, and admins.

Step 3: Set up shop in Commerce Manager

• Go to the page “Create Your Shop” and click on "Next".
• First, you select one of the three checkout methods to determine how your customers should complete their purchase in your shop.
• Then you can indicate on which sales channels the shop should be distributed. Either you choose only Instagram or Facebook or both together.
  
• In the next step, you link your existing product catalog or create a new one. If you are already selling your products via partner platforms, you can simply import the product catalog stored here. Facebook has created a listing of the shops that can be linked. In addition to the common systems like Shopify and BigCommerce, platforms like WooCommerce, ChannelAdvisor and Magento Open Source are also among the supported platforms. We have already introduced more information and further e-commerce platforms & shop systems to you on OMR Reviews. So, if you already use one of the platforms listed by Facebook for your shop, you select the option "Synchronize partner platform" and follow the link to the corresponding website to complete the import. If you do not have a catalog yet, this step will not be displayed to you. In this case, Facebook will automatically create a catalog for you with the designation "Articles for [Name and ID of the page]". You can add your articles later, once the shop is set up.
• Before you finish the registration, you have the opportunity to check your shop details once again. You also have to read and accept the seller agreement.
• In the last step, you submit your shop for review in the Instagram app. This works as follows:

1. Open the Instagram menu via the three stripes on the right.
2. Select the settings.
3. Click on "Set up Instagram Shopping"
4. Select the "Business" item
5. Click on "Let's go"
6. Verify your product catalog by linking your Facebook page and your product catalog.
7. Confirm your website domain
8. Submit your application for review
9. Complete the registration with "Done"
10. Wait until the shop review is completed (this can take up to 7 days)

What happens if the Instagram Shop was denied?

Unfortunately, shop requests are being rejected more and more often, as Instagram has greatly increased the restrictions for the shopping function.

It's important that you check again to make sure none of the following errors appear in your feed or product descriptions, as they can automatically lead to Instagram rejecting your requests.

1. Technical errors in the product feed: Make sure you have correctly and completely entered all the required information such as title, description, availability, condition, price, ID and link to purchase completion.
2. Prohibited contents or products: Products or topics such as alcohol, weapons, drugs, narcotics or medicines are per se not approved. What is allowed and what is not can be read in the Facebook Policy.
3. Wrong category selected: Instagram is very selective when it comes to categories. A "Personal Blog" is rarely approved as a shop. It is best to select directly the parent category "Product/ Services". But be careful: Especially with digital products or services like online courses or coachings, the chances of approval are decreasing. Instagram wants to market mainly haptic products for its shop function.
4. Mainly personal photos in the feed: Your profile should clearly show that it is about selling products. Ideally, follow the rule that 80% of the images show your product, or your products.
5. Logo forgotten: A logo is essential not only for your recognition value, but also for your professional perception. Instagram also takes this criterion seriously when approving the shop.

How can you sell via the Instagram Shop?

The basis for successful sales via your shop is firstly complete product descriptions and expressive pictures. If you need support in these topics, we recommend you our articles “Creating product descriptions” and “Product photos for online shops”. There you will learn what really matters in the textual and graphical design of your shop and how you can achieve the best results.

Once you have laid these two important foundations, you can now begin promoting your products via different content formats.

Product Post:In the classic post you can tag up to 5 products from your product catalog. To do this, choose a picture you want to upload and click "Tag products" in the last editing step. Now you can click on the desired items in your picture and select the matching products from your catalog. Make sure that you place the tags as exactly as possible so that there is no confusion for the users in case of several product stickers.

If you upload multiple images in one post, i.e. create a "carousel post", Instagram allows up to 20 tags in this post. In this way, a single product collection can be marketed in one post. This function is particularly worthwhile for beauty and fashion companies with a wide product portfolio.

Product Video:You can also tag your products in videos. These are a great variation to product photos and can bring a new focus on your portfolio. In videos, you have the opportunity to show the use of your products and can stage them in film sequences. Especially the growing importance of moving images on Instagram, the combination of photos and videos can take your Instagram shop to the next level.

Stories with product/shop link:If you want to upload a story, you can directly insert a sticker with a link to a shown product or your shop. To do this, click on the sticker settings and select the shopping symbol with the shopping bag. In the next step, you have the opportunity to either select a product from your product catalog or directly link your Instagram shop. The brand new thing is the insertion of an external link, where you can enter the web address of your own online shop.

In contrast to posts, where up to 20 tags are possible, you can only link one product in a story.

Instagram Shopping Ads:Direct promotion of Instagram shops as well as the integration of shopping stickers in advertisements is currently unfortunately not possible. However, there is a small detour with which you can still draw attention to your shop: with the normal promotion of your contributions and stories. In your ads, refer to your shop and ask viewers to read more about your products in the shop or to look out there for news. In this way, you can reach more audience than just your followers and draw their attention to your shop.

You see: With the setup of an Instagram shop, you have a multitude of possibilities to creatively stage your products and can thus not only animate your existing community to buy, but also easily reach new target groups.

For further questions on the topic of "webshop", we recommend our articles “Creating an online shop in 5 steps” and “The 7 best shop systems & webshop softwares” on OMR Reviews.