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Instagram Shopping

Instagram Shopping is a set of Instagram features that lets a business with an approved shop and a product catalog tag products in its posts and show them in a shop on its profile. Shoppers who tap through complete the purchase on the merchant's own website.

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By , Founder & CEOUpdated 6 min read

What is Instagram Shopping?

Instagram Shopping links an Instagram business account to a product catalog. For tagging through its API, Meta's developer documentation says an account that has not set up an Instagram Shop is ineligible and that Instagram Creator accounts are not supported. Shopify's help center describes the result: a shop on the profile that customers open with View Shop, and products tagged in posts and, through shopping stickers, in image stories. For Shopify merchants, the Facebook and Instagram by Meta channel syncs products to the Meta catalog, and a product must be in both the Meta catalog and the Shopify store to be tagged.

The purchase does not happen inside Instagram. Meta's commerce documentation says that when customers buy from a shop on Facebook or Instagram, checkout takes place on the merchant's own website, and that a shop uses the website's checkout for all purchases. Shopify's page says Instagram Shopping now redirects customers to the Shopify checkout. Descriptions of buying inside the app therefore no longer apply. Meta also notes that the journey on Facebook and Instagram Shopping may differ at discovery but shares a similar point of purchase.

For measurement this matters because the order is recorded in the merchant's own store data. Meta's documentation says it appends utm_source=IGShopping and utm_medium=Social to links from a shop to the website, the same values for shops on Instagram and on Facebook, and a cart_origin value of instagram, facebook or meta_shops when shoppers go from the shop's cart to checkout. It tells merchants to pass these parameters through any redirect. The tags record the route a buyer took, not whether Instagram Shopping caused the purchase: a buyer who tapped a product tag might have bought anyway.

Meta documents randomized lift studies for ads, in which a test group sees an ad and a control group does not, and says access to Conversion Lift Measurement is currently limited. Without a randomized holdout, the effect of the feature has to be judged from comparisons that rest on assumptions, and a 2019 paper comparing Facebook ad experiments with observational methods found that the observational estimates often failed to reproduce the experimental ones.

For illustration, suppose Shopify shows 50 orders in a month from sessions tagged utm_source=IGShopping. That counts orders whose route ran through a shop on Instagram or Facebook. If 30 of those buyers would have bought anyway, the shops added 50 - 30 = 20 orders, a number the tags cannot show.

Why Instagram Shopping matters for ecommerce

Instagram Shopping changes where a sale is recorded and how it is credited. Because checkout is on the merchant's site, orders land in the store's own data with source tags, so the channel shows up in Shopify reports. That visibility counts routes, not added sales. Shopify also notes that checkouts can exceed add-to-cart counts when customers buy from channels such as Instagram Shopping or Facebook Shops, so funnel rates in the store can mislead as this traffic grows. For a brand deciding how much to invest in tagging products and shop content, the question is incremental: how many of the tagged-link orders would have happened anyway. The tags cannot answer it; a comparison can.

How to use Instagram Shopping

  1. Check eligibility. The Instagram business account needs an approved Instagram Shop with a catalog that contains products, the merchant must be in a country or region supported by Instagram, and, in Shopify, a product must be in both the Meta catalog and the online store to be tagged.
  2. Tag products in posts and, if wanted, in image stories with shopping stickers. Edit names, descriptions and prices in the Shopify listing and publish the change, because that is where the product tag details come from, and Shopify says the description cannot differ on Instagram.
  3. Confirm the tracking yourself. Open a product in your shop, continue to your website, and look in the address for utm_source=IGShopping and utm_medium=Social, or for cart_origin when shoppers go from the shop's cart straight to checkout. Make sure your site and any redirect keep those parameters.
  4. In Shopify, open Analytics, then Reports, and build a report of sessions, orders and net sales by UTM source or referrer. Read it next to total store orders, not instead of it.
  5. Keep a dated log of posts, tag changes, sales and paid campaigns. To judge what Instagram Shopping adds, compare periods or product sets against a comparison group, or run a randomized lift study for paid ads where Meta grants access.
  6. Pass: orders tagged to Instagram Shopping rise and total store orders rise by a similar amount against the comparison. Fail: tagged orders rise while total orders stay flat, which means orders moved between channels.

Common mistakes

  1. Describing it as in-app checkout. Meta's commerce documentation says purchases from a shop check out on the merchant's website, so the orders are recorded in the store. The cost is looking for sales inside Meta tools and undercounting them.
  2. Counting every order tagged IGShopping as added by the feature. The tag records the route, and a shopper who was already going to buy may use it. The cost is overstating the channel.
  3. Dropping the tracking parameters. Meta tells merchants to pass them along if their checkout redirects, and Shopify lists blocked referrer data among the reasons a referrer name shows as N/A. The cost is shop orders landing in direct or unknown traffic.
  4. Reading Shopify funnel rates without the caveat. Checkouts can exceed add-to-cart counts when customers buy straight from Instagram Shopping or Facebook Shops, so funnel rates can mislead. The cost is blaming the cart page for a tracking effect.
  5. Summing channel credit without reconciling it to orders. Shopify notes that its any-click model allocates more credit than the orders received and describes it as a way to reconcile attribution reported by each channel. The cost is counting one order several times.

Frequently asked questions

  • What is Instagram Shopping?
    It is the set of Instagram features, built on a product catalog and an approved shop, that lets a business tag products in posts and show them in a shop on its profile. Shoppers who tap a product go to the merchant's website to check out.
  • Can customers buy inside the Instagram app?
    Not according to current documentation. Meta's commerce documentation says checkout for shop purchases takes place on the merchant's own website, and Shopify says Instagram Shopping now redirects customers to the Shopify checkout. Older descriptions of in-app checkout are out of date.
  • How do I track Instagram Shopping sales in Shopify?
    Meta appends utm_source=IGShopping and utm_medium=Social to links from a shop to the website, and cart_origin when shoppers go from the shop's cart to checkout. Group Shopify sessions and sales by UTM source or referrer, and keep the parameters through any redirect.
  • Does Instagram Shopping increase sales?
    The tags show where an order came from, not whether it would have happened without the feature, so they cannot answer this. Meta documents randomized lift studies for ads, with limited access. Otherwise the evidence comes from comparisons that rest on assumptions.

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