Instagram is rolling back some of its shopping features.
The social media company informed its staff recently that the platform is shifting its priorities in e-commerce. Instagram announced that they will be pulling back several Instagram shopping features as they head toward designing a shopping product that is less personalized.
The social media platform prepares to shift its focus from e-commerce efforts toward those that directly drive advertising.
Due to the shifting priorities of the company, Instagram's entire staff has been informed that the currently available shopping page will be removed at some point in the future.
The retreat illustrates how Meta Platforms is shifting its focus from some long-term projects to building its short-form video company. The social media platform has plans to significantly reduce the number of shopping features it offers.
Instagram Shopping Features
Instagram is removing several shopping features, but it is not rolling back all the functions and features of the platform that allow shopping.
According to a memo that was sent out to Instagram's employees, the company will not completely discontinue its shopping feature.
Instead, over the course of the next few months, Instagram will test a more streamlined and impersonalized version of the shopping page that is internally referred to as Tab Lite.
According to Insider, the platform will start distributing the feature to the general public in order to conduct a beta test that will familiarize users with the Tab Lite version of its shopping page.
By March 2023, the platform also intends, provisionally, to remove the button that is designed to take users to the shopping tab that is currently available.
Instagram has informed its employees that the upcoming changes are the result of a new northstar and goals for the company that are more directly related to Meta's advertising revenue efforts.
A Meta spokesperson stated, "Commerce remains important for Instagram as we continue to make it easier for people to discover and shop products throughout the app from feed, stories, reels, and innovations like live shopping and drops."
Additionally, the platform is still dedicated to achieving its long-term goal of becoming the go-to destination for users to find and purchase products created by their favorite creators and brands.
Pulling Back on Efforts in Commerce
Instagram has a broad and detailed coverage of their shopping features. Instagram shopping has evolved through time. For now, it consists of a plethora of features that the platform gives to brands when they want to start selling.
People will be able to easily navigate through a brand's photos and videos across the entirety of the platform thanks to this collection of features.
The capability to describe products is a good illustration of this feature that a lot of people are already familiar with. Included in a product description is all of the pertinent information on an item from your product catalog, such as the price and a description of the item.
Additionally, there are features such as shopping tags, live shopping, product launches, shops in explore, and many other similar features. There has been no clarification from Meta regarding which Instagram features will be removed at this time.
On the other hand, earlier this summer, it informed its staff that it would be rolling back features such as community-driven shopping projects, creator commerce, friends and family shopping, visual search, and Instagram shopping.
The decrease in emphasis placed on shopping on Instagram coincides with a larger scale internal pullback on shopping initiatives across all of Meta's platforms.
