Instagram’s Looking to Launch a Standalone App for Online Shopping
This article discusses how the Facebook owned platform, Instagram, is looking to “maximize the potential of shopping on the visual platform, without risking the current Instagram user-experience in a significant way.” A lot of businesses post their new items and advertise on Instagram, but they want to try to take that experience to the next level and involve purchasing directly through the Instagram application. Some brands I follow online, such as Lulu Lemon already puts links and advertises their new items on Instagram, but for the user to actually purchase the item the user has to click on a link that directs you to their website. Instagram is trying to streamline this process.
The application name might be “IG Shopping” and would highlight businesses you already follow. There would be links on the regular Instagram page to bring you to the shopping application. Kind of like how the Facebook application links you to the messenger application. Ultimately, this new application would be a direct rival for the Shopify app.
In my opinion, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” While innovation and change can bring great success, I am not sure this is what Instagram users want. I fear that users would feel annoyed by this shopping application because in this article they discussed how you would see links to this application in your regular Instagram feed. Instagram however feels like it would be a positive step because they have slowly been moving towards eCommerce within their application, and have introduced “shopping tags” to select featured businesses.
