“Whether you are a candle business making a foray into e-commerce, a musician selling merch, or a food blogger expanding into your own cookware line, any eligible business or creator account with at least one eligible product can use shopping tags to drive people to their website to make a purchase,” Instagram wrote in a blog post.
Instagram says it’s extending its shopping feature to allow creators to sell their merchandise directly through the platform beginning next month.
Before now, Instagram Shopping has been limited to only celebrities and influencers, however, the social networking app is extended access to more types of businesses with new commerce eligibility requirements.
Shopping tags were first rolled out by Instagram in 2016, followed by shopping tags in Instagram Stories in 2018. Instagram also opened up shopping features for celebrities and influencers in 2019.
But so far, Instagram had largely left out creators from the shopping experience. The updated eligibility requirements will now support more types of businesses.
Instagram Shopping Eligibility Requirements for Creatives
The first thing to have in mind is this, Instagram Shopping is only available for selected countries as such, creators who wish to use this new feature will have to reside in such countries.
Here’s a list of countries with support for Instagram Shopping currently.
Businesses who are eligible can start selling their products directly on Instagram starting July 9 in all countries
where Instagram Shopping is supported.
Eligible merchants can tag products they want to sell through organic posts or stories or have them surface on the Search and Explore tab. The tags will highlight the product that’s on sale from the photo, and clicking on it will redirect to the merchant’s website where users can purchase the product.
However, the products must be tagged from a single website that is owned by the business, to ensure a consistent and trusted shopping experience.