I may have written about shopping here before, it’s almost like I have a shopping problem. I’m not alone though, as rarely a day goes by in our office without a visit from Darrell the DPD man, the friendliest of Yodel delivery ladies, and of course Mr Hermes. And I’m going to make a prediction… we’re going to start seeing them a lot more often.
This week sees the roll out of Instagram’s shoppable posts feature across eight new countries. Creating ‘an immersive storefront for people to explore your best products with a single tap’ shoppers no longer need to click a link in a bio, search for a product code online, or trawl through endless pages on-site searching for the dream item they’ve seen on a carefully curated grid.
Now a single click on the image in your feed will offer a product description, pricing information, and a link taking you direct to the product online, and of course to purchase. As dangerous as this might be personally for late night, out and about, or dare I say post drink browsing, it’s set to be great news for businesses – big and small.
According to TechCrunch, ‘Instagram says about half of its daily active users currently follow an ‘active shopping business’’ and Instagram head of business Jim Squires explains the latest development: “People come to Instagram every day to discover and buy products from their favorite businesses. We want to be that seamless experience. Whether it’s a local artisan, florist or clothing store, shopping directly on Instagram has never been easier.”
It’ll be interesting to see the results, there’s going to be some great data here so perhaps we can expect a new analytics update too? When and how much are we all willing to spend via the Gram? What are we buying and will small businesses be winning?
A recent survey by UK marketplace Onbuy.com revealed the shopping habits of more than 1,500 consumers, and their reasons for making online purchases… looking at the UK average, 77% of us shop for needed items while 38% of us are driven by sales, and a further 4% confess to being drunk, depressed (6%) or after a breakup (5%). Speaking personally, Instagram has become my go to platform, first thing in the morning and last look at night. And with next day delivery cut off times extending the 24/7 shopping culture, this is just the update we all needed…
As the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text, with colours affecting the way we are effected during the shopping process Instagram would seem the most logical of retail pr platforms. Perhaps we’ll be seeing more yellow, orange and reds on our Insta feed – grabbing our attention, creating a call to action and creating urgency! And with 80% of us remembering the things we see and do, there’s going to be a whole lot of scrolling back to find that item that you just can’t live without, until tomorrow at least.
Our consumer lifestyle PR team specialise in connecting everyday brands with everyday people across four core sectors; Consumer Lifestyle PR, Food & Drink PR, Consumer Technology PR and Sport, Health & Wellbeing PR. More information on these areas of knowledge can be found at www.escapadepr.com/about-us.
