Instagram is one of today’s most-loved social networks, providing users with a fun destination to share filtered photographs and learn about new products they love. Numbers don’t lie with over 1B users and 500M DAU.
And back in 2018, I wrote a post about how Instagram can become THE Messaging-app giant.
Its next chapter, however, involves so much more than photo sharing and direct messages between friends.
Instagram kicked off its evolution on November 12th of 2020. This is the day Instagram redesigned its homepage to include shopping for the first time and signaled to the world its plans to become a bigger player in the world of eCommerce, beyond beautiful photos and mere product discovery. Instagram announced that its users would be able to start making purchases directly within the app, definitively ushering the mobile app into the world of online shopping.
But, past even their redesigned homepage and ability to support in-app purchases, the newest and boldest addition to Instagram Shopping is chat and automated messaging.
In the past year, the number of daily conversations between shoppers and brands on Facebook and Instagram grew by 40%, illustrating a significant opportunity for eCommerce businesses to connect with their customers in a meaningful way.
Through messaging, Instagram can now support fully comprehensive customer journeys, from discovery, to purchase, to customer care — setting the platform up for its next phase in challenging Amazon’s eCommerce dominance.
Studies have shown that consumers strongly prefer to use messaging when interacting with brands and, by incorporating messaging at each stage of the buying journey, Instagram is equipped with a strong competitive advantage that could set them apart from even the biggest players in eCommerce.
By becoming more integrated with its eCommerce brand partners, Facebook can move beyond just being a media platform and truly battle Amazon.
This leaves me asking, could Instagram become the new Amazon?
Let’s discuss the potential of “InstagrAmazon” and the breakdown of the competitive edge that the social network has over eCommerce giants like Amazon.
Instagram has the opportunity to transform eCommerce and achieve something that even the most powerful players, Amazon included, have not: establish an app-based marketplace that drives the sort of impulse buying that brick-and-mortar businesses have traditionally relied on.
70% of shopping enthusiasts already turn to Instagram for product discovery. Now, with the ability to accommodate in-app purchasing, Instagram has established several ways to connect the high-volume of product discovery on their platform to purchase destinations.
You might have seen this before. Within Instagram’s persistent navigation is a Shop icon, which shoppers can use to browse and discover new products. Branded profile pages on Instagram can also include a “View Shop” call to action that directs users to their product catalog. Brands can also tag products in their posts and encourage customers to view specific product listing pages on Instagram.
Each of these entry points drives to an incredibly simple check-out flow. Similar to Amazon’s simplified purchase process, Instagram users can tap on a product, quickly personalize their order (choose a color or size, if applicable), and check out — all without leaving Instagram. For their first purchase, customers will need to enter shipping and payment info at checkout. After that first purchase, customers can complete the future purchases in just two clicks.
Recently, with the arrival of Messenger’s API for Instagram, brands can engage shoppers with chat-based experiences that support commerce. This is important because it enables brands to support a full customer journey in the platform from discovery to care.
Customers can ask purchase-related questions from the brands’ Instagram profile pages, Instagram Stories, and Instagram Shops. eCommerce brands can also initiate automated 1:1 conversations with shoppers who leave questions and comments on brands’ posts.
By seamlessly connecting the massive volume of consumers who use Instagram to discover products with purchase opportunities directly within the app, Instagram possesses a powerful advantage in helping eCommerce businesses drive revenue.
In addition to its enhanced product discovery capabilities, Instagram is also establishing a competitive advantage in care and commerce by introducing messaging powered by natural automation.
Through messaging powered by natural automation, eCommerce brands use Instagram to build stronger relationships with their customers, provide premium customer support, and drive incremental revenue at scale.
Here are some ways natural automation powers next-gen eCommerce experiences on Instagram:
Drive conversions with Automated Product Support — Natural automation on Instagram can be leveraged to answer product-related questions that may be holding shoppers back from making a purchase.
For shoppers that need a bit more support finding the right product for them, natural automation can also act as an in-app shopping assistant that provides personalized suggestions.
Reduce inbound support tickets with automated order management — Natural automation enables eCommerce brands to provide instantaneous customer support that is always-on and is always up to date with shoppers’ past purchases and brand interactions before they even reach out for assistance.
Improve customer satisfaction with immediate FAQ responses — Natural automation empowers eCommerce brands to instantly respond to customers’ most frequently asked questions and automatically address the vast majority of inbound inquiries. For less common and more complex support inquiries, natural automation can also seamlessly connect shoppers from an automated experience to a live agent that can address their unique needs.
In addition to improving customer satisfaction, automated FAQ responses also enable eCommerce teams to focus on driving sales and new purchases instead of an endless queue of customer service inquiries.
Drive incremental revenue through post-purchase marketing — Through natural automation, eCommerce brands can also use Instagram Direct Messages to re-engage customers with highly personalized offers based on their past purchases or brand interactions.
With its focus on end-to-end user experiences powered by highly intelligent messaging, Instagram is quickly repositioning itself from a social media giant to the future of eCommerce.
Instagram’s rapid evolution indicates that the leading eCommerce brands of tomorrow will look beyond transactional marketplaces like Amazon to platforms that enable them to build strong relationships with their customers through highly personalized chat and messaging.