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How would you improve Instagram Shopping?

Instagram Shopping is a relatively new feature launched in 2019.  The goals of the feature are to improve engagement and increase monetization.   

How would you improve Instagram Shopping?
Asked at Instagram
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category Product Improvement category Product Sense companyinstagram
category Product Improvement
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badge Gold PM

Thanks for your question. I'm not aware about the feature. I would like to give a quick look at Instagram and its shopping feature.

User journey:

Explore -> Shop -> Category -> Filters -> Select post -> View Products -> Select Products -> View on website/Directly Buy on Shopping

Since we are talking about the Instagram Shopping experience, I'll pick direct buy on Instagram feature.

Continuing from earlier: 

Instagram shopping -> View product description -> add to bag -> select size -> proceed to checkout -> add address -> payment

There are some other features available as well such as:

  • flag product, not interested
  • Share post
  • Save post
  • More from this shop

*Give me a minute to structure my thoughts.*

Goal

The 2 important goals for Instagram shopping are engagement and monetization. Since there are other features as well to improve engagement on Instagram, I would assume my primary goal to be monetization. Please let me know if you want to continue in a different direction.

User Persona

There are 2 types of users involved in the Instagram shopping experience: shopper and the business.

Since I have viewed the experience from the shopper's perspective, I would like to continue discussing the improvement from the shopper's perspective. Please let me know if you want me to discuss the experience from the business's perspective.

User Journey/ Pain Points

The basic journey that we will consider in this case is:

Select post -> View Products -> Select Products -> Buy on Instagram -> View product description -> add to bag -> select size -> proceed to checkout -> add address -> payment

To increase monetization, we need to make the experience more seamless and as comfortable as it is on other retail websites such as Amazon, and other retailer websites. Please give me a minute to think about the pain points that affect monetization, the most.

Pain points related to monetization: 

  1. brand trust
  2. range of products
  3. sale on items
  4. trust in the supply chain (delivery and returns)
  5. additional accessories

Where the first 3 pain points are directly dependent on the brand and 4th is dependent on the operations, the 5th pain point is something that may be improved through improving the discoverability of the items through recommendations.

I believe recommendations of additional products leads to extra purchases or repeat buying behavior. However, it is important to use Instagram's strengths to improve recommendations.

Give me a minute to gather my thoughts on the kinds of solutions that I can suggest for recommendations.

Solutions & Trade-offs

  1. Similar items
  2. Also worn/used by - 'Instagram Influencer'
  3. How did she/he carry/use?
  4. What's trending?

Feature

Description

Pros

Cons

Impact

Similar items

This is a common feature seen on many retail websites where the user is suggested items similar in design, color to what the user is viewing currently.

Simple to build as tech is already been developed

Not very specific to Instagram

L

Also worn/used by- 'Instagram Influencer'

An image recognition algorithm can be run on existing pictures of top Instagram influencers of the region (better if that influencer is followed by the user), to identify items in their pictures that match the product being viewed by the user.

- Buyers will be highly motivated as people tend to buy products that are influenced by their celebrities.

- Feature specific to Instagram as it has the data to provide this feature

Running image recognition on thousands of pictures in real-time not only requires extensive processing capabilities but also needs to provide results close to perfection

H

How did she/he carry/use?

This feature is an addition to a previous feature where the focus is not on the product but on the additional accessories carried by the Instagram influencer. 

- This lead to repeat buying behavior as a user will be encouraged to buy extra accessories other than just the item being viewed

- Feature specific to Instagram as it has the data to provide this feature

Similar tech required as above

H

What's trending?

The first page after clicking on the ‘SHOP’ icon on the explore page can land the user on the trending page where a list of posts of celebrities is displayed. These posts should include the products (or products similar to the ones) that are available on the Instagram shopping platform. Clicking on these posts should take the user to the list of items that are similar to the one shown in the post.

- Users want to remain updated with the latest trends and if those products are worn by their celebrity influencers, they might directly hit buy.

- Feature specific to Instagram as it has the data to provide this feature

Difficult tech but it’ll be easier to implement this feature as compared to above 2 features as the trending list can be curated for a week/month based on past few weeks/months trends and it may be a common list for a bunch of users based on the similarity of the cohort.

M - H

Considering the tech required and impact of the feature, I would like to prioritize building the last feature i.e. "What's Trending?".

 

Metrics

The metrics that I would use to measure the impact of the feature are:

  • # impressions for "What's Trending?" per user
  • # impressions for "What's Trending?" per user per app visit
  • % conversion from "What's Trending?"

The last metric will be the most important to monitor as the goal of this improvement is monetization.

 

Thank you!

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1 Feedback
badge Platinum PM

Things you did well 

  • Structure: Great structure of the answer. It's easy to follow  
  • Clarifying Questions: You asked a good set of clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the question 
  • Assumptions: You came up with good set of assumptions to narrow down the scope of the question
  • Product Goal: You did a good job describing the objective that you are going to focus on 
  • Solutions: Interesting solutions to solve for the pain point you decided to focus on 
  • Evaluation of the solutions: great job evaluating your solutions and prioritizing them 
  • Metrics of Success: Good set of metrics to measure the success of your product improvement 

Areas of Improvement 

  • User groups: I would have liked to see you go deeper than the "shoppers" user group. Ideally, you would segment this user group to multiple segments and pick one particular one 
  • User journey: I think you are making a couple assumptions in the journey. 1) the experience is just about shopping (e.g. you start with the intention to shop) 2) You mentioned "size",  which is really specific to clothing. If this is the segment you are focusing on, you should mention it. 
  • Pain points: I would have described the pain points in more details. Write a sentence for each so it's clear what the problem statement is  
  • Evaluate your solutions: I think pros and cons are ok to use but they can make your evaluation criteria a bit inconsitent and make it difficult to compare apple to apple. It would have been great to go with a minimum of two metrics such as cost and impact 
I hope it helps. 
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