Every year, online commerce is increasing and more people are “shopping” on Instagram. In fact, according to Hootsuite, one in two people have used Instagram to discover new brands.
This is a very good opportunity that we can take advantage of by creating our own Instagram store in a few steps and start making some extra money.
That’s why, in this post we tell you step by step how to make a store on Instagram without any previous technical knowledge and for a negligible amount of money.
It’s time to start that project you’ve been kicking around for a while and start selling online.
How to make or create a store on Instagram
Before you start selling on Instagram you should know that there are a number of requirements that you must meet to use this functionality. They are the following:
- Your Instagram profile must be a business one.
Personal accounts cannot have a store on Instagram, so you must change this configuration.
It is a very simple step, which you can do in “Settings”, “Settings”, “Account” and scroll down until you reach the option “Switch to professional account”.
- Have published at least 9 posts
A good option is to upload photos related to your products or your brand.
- Your store must sell physical products, not services
If you sell services, Instagram does not allow you this option (for the moment).
- Have a website for your store
- Link your Facebook Fan Page to Instagram and have a Facebook Business Manager account.
In order to upload products to Instagram you need to have this link. Don’t worry because in the following sections we will see how to do it.
- Download the latest version of Instagram
This requirement is very simple, and to check if you have the latest version installed you can go to the platform from where you download the applications (Google Play, Appstore etc.), search for “Instagram” and check the current version. If you don’t have it, an option will appear for you to update it.
- Your company must comply with Instagram’s trade policies and trade agreements and be among the following allowed markets and countries.
Instagram shopping: how to set up and add a store on Instagram
Instagram Shopping is an Instagram feature that allows brands to create a store on this social network and users to directly buy the tagged products of the account they follow.
What this allows us to do is to be able to tag the products of your store in the publications (those of the feed or stories) and that users can buy it directly, because when you click on the label of the product you access through a direct gateway to the sale of this on your website.
In this way the Instagram account can be a catalog or showcase of our store.
In fact, we can find the “Shop” section in the main menu of Instagram. This is a revolution, as Instagram is positioning itself very strongly in online sales.
The user experience is much more complete than if you search from Google and we can even reach many more people, since our product can appear in recommended content without them even looking for it directly.
Steps to create an online store on Instagram
In this section we see in detail each step to create an online store on Instagram.
- Business profile on your Instagram account
If your Instagram account is still personal (default mode when we create an account) we will not be able to create our store.
To be able to create our store on Instagram we need to have the profile configured as a business one.
- Connect Facebook store with Instagram
With the business account already set up we can now connect our account to the Facebook page.
To do so, follow these steps:
Access the profile
Click on “Edit” and in the “Company public information” section click on “Page”.
Now, select the Facebook page you want to connect, and in case you don’t have it yet we can create it.
- Create the product catalog
The third step to create our Instagram store is to create and connect the product catalog of our store.
In this step what we have to do is to upload to Facebook the products that we are going to sell in our store.
This step is done through Business Manager or through the platform with which we have our online store (Shopify, WooCommerce etc.).
If you are also interested in seeing the whole process of how to create an online store with any of these platforms, I recommend you take a look at our YouTube channel Citizen 2.0, because there you will find several videos where we tell you how to do it.
- Send store for review by Facebook
Once you have the catalog created, you must send your Instagram store to Meta for review.
This can take from 3 days to 2 weeks.
To do this, go to the “Settings” section, from the top right button in the shape of three horizontal sticks and click on “Company”.
Now click on “Sign up for Shopping on Instagram”.
If during the process you want to see the status of the request for this review you can see it in the “Settings” and “Shopping” section.
- Activate product tagging.
The fifth step is to activate product tagging for our Instagram store. For that our store has to have been reviewed by Meta, so if this is not yet the case, you will have to wait. - Tag your store’s products in your posts
To start selling your products on Instagram, the best thing to do is to upload a post and tag them. This way your followers will see your product in their feed.
To do this, you should follow the normal process of uploading a post to Instagram and once you have added the photo and text, you should click on “Tag products”.
Just like when we tag a person in a post, click where the product is in the photo and you will see the list of available products.
