There's a lot to love about the Instagram checkout. We see something we like, we tap on it and buy it. Easy, breezy, beautiful.
The business is being able to connect with their audience on Instagram where they already are and giving them the opportunity to go through the whole checkout process without actually having to leave the platform. is going to be absolutely fantastic. Gabby touches on a fundamental truth. If we're forking over cash, we want it to be as easy as possible. While the Instagram checkout is a huge opportunity for some retailers, it's not necessarily the right platform for everyone.
My fear is that Instagram might start controlling shops like eBay does. And you search eBay, you find on eBay, you buy with eBay, you ship with eBay. There's a bit of a risk that if you put all your eggs in the Instagram basket and the algorithm tips upside down, you might find yourself without a business.
Biteable's marketing strategist makes a good point. You are participating in Instagram's version of e-commerce and it's Instagram who's in charge of what happens here. And when things go wrong, they go so wrong.
Particularly if we have another incident like we did a couple of weeks ago when Facebook and Instagram went down, that's a whole day's worth of business that you could miss out on if your entire store is only on Instagram. The reality is that Instagram wasn't designed to be an online retailer. There are features that don't hold up.
up on their shopping channels. For example, retailers that have a huge catalogue of goods can only tag a few items per post. They also need to post a lot of content to make their full catalogue discoverable on Instagram. We could essentially look at this as a race to the bottom. Instagram just doesn't care too deeply about your brand identity.
Without that context, products in similar categories are reduced to price point comparisons and that can dilute all the hard work you've been putting into building your brand. While the announcement about the new Instagram checkout has been called a marketer's holy grail, our suggestion is to have a long, hard think about your long-term business strategy.