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Buy What You 'Like': You Can Now Shop Straight From Instagram

This article is more than 9 years old.

For retailers, three year old photo-sharing site Instagram has proven a bonanza, with fans 'liking' and commenting on product images in unprecedented numbers.

According to analytics and marketing platform Curalate, social media users interact with brands on Instagram 58 times more than they do on Facebook, and a whopping 120 times more than on Twitter .

But for retailers, Instagram has proven difficult to monetize. The photo app doesn't allow links on individual posts. For example, over 15,100 of Nordstrom's 532,000+ Instagram followers pressed 'like' on a photo of colorful Christian Louboutin heels in late August.

But if any of those fans wanted to immediately buy that pair of $1400 shoes, they'd be out of luck. They'd have to leave Instagram and dig around on their own on Nordstrom's site to find the pumps, or -- more likely -- just head to Google or abandon the search entirely.

"It's been a customer pain point," said Bryan Galipeau, social media director at Nordstrom. "When we would post these images, pretty much every time we'd get questions like: 'Is this still available? What size? What does it cost?'"

Nordstrom's social media team would reply to individual comments underneath posts of clothing and accessories, giving potential buyers the relevant item numbers. This proved time consuming, to say the least.

Now, a solution: Nordstrom is the first retailer to roll out Like2Buy, a new service that makes Instagram shoppable developed by Curalate.

Billed as the "missing link" between traffic and revenue, the technology allows fans to click the one link Instagram permits (atop a brand's profile page) then displays an elegant grid of all the items up for sale from the retailer's feed. One more click takes a user to the store's secure mobile site.

Like2Buy also functions as a curation tool for shoppers. By 'liking' a photo of a handbag, or lipstick, or anything, Instagrammers can create their own wishlist or save products to buy later.

As well as Nordstrom, major retailers already signed up to use Like2Buy include Target and Charlotte Russe. For the latter, with its demographic of mobile-savvy teen girls, the platform represents an important advancement.

"Our shopper is using social media to influence purchases," said Kristen Strickler, social media and PR manager at the fast fashion brand. "And the more steps they have to take to buy something, the more it drops off."

Strickler adds that Charlotte Russe shoppers have responded particularly well to photos of "product laydowns", to use industry parlance (see the above photo for an example, tagged with #OOTD - Outfit Of The Day - a popular Instagram hashtag for fashion lovers).

"Across the board, millenials respond to those the most," said Strickler. "That's how they would put together a look on the hanger, or on the floor the night before they wear it."

Now, Charlotte Russe and brands of its ilk can finally see some real return on investment for these carefully created Instagram outfits.

"Making Instagram shoppable is something we've been wanting to do for a long time," she said. "Fans have been constantly asking."

Nordstrom's Bryan Galipeau sees Like2Buy as a step in the right direction for social media personalization. "This has been live for 24 hours, and the initial feedback has been pretty positive," he said. "It's, 'why didn't I think of that?'"

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