Now you can shop on Instagram

There's a high probability that you will no longer read "link in the bio" in your Instagram app. The Facebook-owned company is planning to provide the option of 'shoppable posts' to its 5,00,000 advertisers to feature up to five products and drive users to the product’s website and earn money.

The feature is currently in its testing phase with a small group of iOS users in the United States.
“Mobile has changed the way people shop,” Instagram said in a blog post announcing the new feature. “You browse products while waiting to be seated for dinner, make purchases on your commute into work, and compare prices online when you're at a store to see what the better deal is.”

With the new functionality, advertisers or influencers can directly link product and purchasing information in their posts, instead of the bio.

Aiming to play a much more prominent role in product discovery, Instagram has also tied-up with 20 U.S.-based retailers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Coach, Hollister, JackThreads, J.Crew, Levi's. The feature will display product's price, description, and additional photos and provide a 'Shop Now' button to buy it on the web.

According to TechCrunch, Instagram won’t make money off of these shoppable posts in the beginning. The plan, eventually, is to encourage advertisers to promote their shoppable posts to users who do not follow them already, similar to how promoted and sponsored posts appear in your Instagram feed today.

Currently, Instagram is working on features like ‘product recommendation’ and ‘save for later’ before fully rolling out the feature officially. Furthermore, Company is planning to use this test to learn more about what works, what doesn’t and how to better serve their users and advertisers around the world.