Instagram is rolling out a service allowing designers to sell their products direct to their followers, according to the platform’s head of design Ian Spalter.
Spalter revealed the plans at a discussion in Milan last month, held in collaboration with Dezeen.
“I’d love to see Instagram become an avenue for small businesses to become more successful,” he said. “I think that would be a great opportunity.”
In 2016, Instagram introduced a shopping feature enabling businesses to tag products with pricing information, which users can click on to buy the products via the company’s website.
The feature was initially available to large fashion retailers, but Spalter suggested the company is exploring the possibility of also rolling it out to small businesses.
“It’s a new area that we’re experimenting with and seeing what works,” he said.
“I think that Instagram is a great place to learn about products in context. It’s like a lifestyle – you see how it fits in as supposed to just a catalogue. So it is an area that we’re continuing to develop.”
Spalter also suggested that, one day, Instagram users could be able to purchase products directly within the app rather than being redirected to an external website, as is currently the case. He also hinted that the platform could branch out to enable users to pay for all kinds of different goods and services, similar to what social-media rival WeChat offers users in China.
“We’re constantly trying to figure out new problems to solve – and usually we look for behaviours that exist within the community and look for ways to make those things easier to do,” he said.
“So if it becomes something that we see , that there are small businesses that do transact on Instagram, there may be opportunities for us to make that easier. And [we might] go beyond just shopping, in these cases.”
Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2018/05/15/video-talk-instagram-designers-sell-products-ian-spalter-head-of-design-movie/
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