Lessons

Lesson Info

Q&A

so at this point I'd like to introduce Susan blakely, thank you so much Bridget Hi everyone, my name is Susan Blakely and I am the Product marketing Manager for commerce on small business, very excited to be here and join Bridget for the Q and a portion of this event. Hopefully I'll be able to answer some of the questions that you guys have coming into the live feed. Sure we should. Yes there's definitely a lot of questions coming in. The first one is what is the eligibility criteria of instagram shopping? Yeah sure. So great first question thank you for whoever asked that. Um so short answer is um instagram shopping is available globally, you can see the full list of supported markets and our business help center but we do also have some commerce eligibility requirements that businesses using ig shopping must adhere to. Um these are some things like products that you can and can't sell through ig instagram shopping but also some requirements like you must have your own website that re...

flects your brand and the products that you actually sell. So definitely have a look at the commerce eligibility requirements on our business help center page. For more information. Right and I see a question here, I know that I mentioned commerce Manager a lot. Can you help answer what is commerce manager and how can businesses access it? Yeah it's a super important to from a shopping perspective so that commerce managers are primary to for helping businesses to onboard to and manage their shop. So sort of first steps would be creating a Commerce Manager account if you don't have one. Um once you have a commerce manager account like I mentioned, you can set up and manage your shop within that there you can manage, you can set up and manage your catalog and the products and inventory within that create collections, customize your shop storefront and you can also do things like manage orders and payments for businesses or checkout enabled and see sort of performance and insight relating to your shopping activity. Again you can learn more in terms of how to set up your commerce manager account and our business help center. Thanks. And we're actually getting a few questions relating to numbers of products. So the first question is there a limit to the number of products that I may have in my shop. Actually no, there is no limit to the number of products that business can have in their shop. What we do recommend is that businesses use the collections capability through commerce manager to set their shop up in a way that makes sense for customers so that they can browse and discover products more easily. I think this is a really great way to like you talked about in your in your content budget, a really great way to um just make sure that products have been showcased in a way that's going to bring the brand and the products to life. Thanks and I see a question here, you know a lot of businesses have one product like a book. A lot of businesses have like this question over products. So one of the questions we received as do I need to input my excuse manually if I have like over 5000 products and I know that on one of the slides that I presented I showed commerce manager and then I also showed that there were other platform partners that you can integrate with. So for this question the answer is you can do it manually but obviously you feel that many products, it's not easy to do it manually. So if you're already integrated with a Shopify, a big commerce or any of those partners you can integrate your product catalog through instagram's commerce manager from those partners. So then the answer becomes no you don't need to do everything manually. Um if you already have a catalog that exists with some of these platform partners. Okay, that's that's that's totally right. And just to tangle into that, there's also a bulk upload feature for catalog where businesses can create a data feed file for um for those scenarios where there's many many products with their catalog and it can be quite challenging to manage. So that's another option um tom more information on the help center pages as well just in terms of how to actually do that and set that book. Thank you. That's a good point. The bulk upload as well. Another question we have is can a business set up more than one shot? Good question. Um Yes businesses can set up one more ship. Can set up more than one shop. They can use Commerce Manager to toggle between their shops at any time and sort of manage the products and the castle of inventory within that. So yes. Short answer. All right. I'm seeing another question coming here around eligibility. I know Susan you answered this. It's it's around which countries shopping is available in and um it's a long list that I'm sure. Susan and I can't get roof on the top of our head but in those commerce eligibility requirements within our help center you will see all of the countries um in which shopping is currently available. And of course we're always looking to expand. Okay let's see here. How can a business create a shop collection. Sure. So sort of step by step to create a shops collection. A business would log into their Commerce manager account and toggle to the shop that they would want to click create the collection for um from there go into that shop to the edit feature and then select sort of the ad the plus button. And from their businesses can either add an image or product grid to start their collection and then leverage an existing product set or create a new one. To sort of complete their collection. Businesses can also create a dynamic can create dynamic sets of products to complement their collection within the shop. So short answer is leverage commerce manager and the floor within that to help you set up and create a really strong collection. Okay. Um Okay, another question here is around gaining customer trust. I've actually received this question before, so happy to chime in, but what should I do to gain customers trust to purchase you know first? Um I want a caveat with this question that before you onboard to instagram shopping, you need to have a business account on instagram. So you through instagram are already verified as a trusted business. And then the other steps that you have to take in order to onboard onto instagram shopping include things like linking your website domain in which you own. Um so that it can be proven that the products that you're selling on instagram um are owned by you and match the brand and the products in which you're selling on your website. So there are some trust layers that are already in place um in order to set up a shop on instagram. So in terms of gaining customers trust to them purchase um in my opinion that comes down to kind of content and storytelling. Um and really like I said telling the story behind your products and trying to build community one on one engagement. A lot of really foundational tactics to try to grow trust with potential followers and customers. Um of course there are other things you can do later that I've seen the question like um like set promotions. Um But I think that if the question is really coming down to earning trust, I think a lot of that comes down to really building community and telling the story of your brand and even highlighting the value proposition of your brand in your in your bio. Um So that's that's kind of my thoughts on that. I don't have anything to add script. Yeah. Um Which countries is checkout on instagram available in great question. So at the moment, today businesses in the US um that meet certain criteria can direct people to check out directly from their instagram page instead of transacting through their business website. We're actively working on expanding availability and as part of that we will be looking at improving the overall experience of check out as well. But at this time we were not able to share which other markets maybe sort of next in line or what our expansion plans are. But for the moment check out is available for us businesses. Thank you. Um Now we have a question about internationalization. So let's say a country has three different languages and currencies. Are they able to promote their products if they if they're in that situation where they are a global business and have different languages and currencies. Yeah, that's actually a really great question. Um so businesses can customize their catalog with a localized feed which would enable them to customize their content based on the local sort of attributes of the customers. So that can include things like currency language, um you know, different types of sizing, like in europe, for example, different countries have different sizing for shoes and for clothes. Um and I'm sure it applies to the rest of the world as well. Um so actually using that look like feed within catalog is the best way to customize content for local audiences. Can then be used in organic and paid activity on instagram. Right? And then I think we have time for one more question. Um is there a fee for using shops? Great question. Um So short answer is no, there's no fee for businesses to use shop shops. Is the place to help businesses promote their, promote their shop and their content and their products across across our platforms. So businesses can. Business businesses can include products in your shop and promote and sort of have that content on our platforms for free customers can also browse the business's shop and and even sort of moved to transact through the business's website offline without any fees. However, that changes a little bit for businesses who are driving customers to transact on site on the inside on their instagram page. We do have a seller fee as part of that agreement for any businesses who have onboarding to check out. You'll know there's a set of terms and conditions that you would sign up to during onboarding and that would have all of those criteria and those fees there. But the good news is actually from the moment we are waving our on site check out fee to support businesses better in terms of recovery from the global pandemic. Obviously it's a super challenging year for many, many businesses in the goal of waving that sailor faces to try to support businesses and and their recovery and their and their activity on facebook and instagram. Thank you Susan. Um I think that's it with the Q. And A. But if there are any questions that we didn't answer, I do just want to give another plug for the at instagram for business social account and also I believe pinned to the top of the comment box is a link to the instagram for business shopping website. So a lot of additional resources there. And then of course um you know social is a two way conversation so that instagram for business social account is another place to hopefully help get some of the questions answered that we didn't get to today. Thanks again everyone. Thank you mm mm