Shoppable Instagram for Etsy
When I endeavored on the journey to make my instagram posts shoppable I thought it would be easy and straightforward. NOPE. Something about linking to Etsy was just not happening.
Much research and trial and error later, we have a success! See the final product here.
Tagging your products on Instagram makes your posts “shoppable”, meaning anyone can click the product tag and get directed over to your Etsy shop to purchase. If you’re interested in doing the same for your Etsy shop, this is your detailed guide to getting there.
1. Create a Dedicated Instagram Account for Your Etsy Shop
This won’t work on a personal account – so make sure you set up an Instagram that’s clearly for your business. Odds are you have already done this step, but if you haven’t, take this time to also create some posts of your products so we can make those shoppable later. Note that you need to sell physical goods for this to work.
2. Make sure you Instagram is eligible
This requires you to have the latest version of the instagram app on your phone. In addition, you need to make sure your shop’s instagram account is a business account. To set your account to business, go to your profile and open the menu in the top right. Go to settings > Account > Switch to Professional Account > Business. To see Facebook’s official instructions, just click here.
3. Create a Facebook Page for Your Etsy Shop
If you don’t have one of these already, you can follow the simple instructions here. Make sure to at least set your cover photo and banner, as well as make a couple of posts. Feel free to steal ideas from my page.
4. Start a Product Catalog on Facebook
This is where your product links will live, since Facebook and Instagram are one company they will share this catalog. To start a new catalog, navigate to your facebook page, under the “manage page” menu head to “manage shop” and then click the link to “Go to Commerce Manager”.
Once you get there, under catalog go to > items. You can see I have already added a few. Click the blue button to create a new item. I recommend picking the products shown in your last couple instagram posts so you can go back to those posts and tag the products.
When you add your item, select ‘add manually’, and just add your main listing photo and go ahead and copy and paste your short title and your product description straight from Etsy as shown in the example above.
**This next part is the absolute most important step to get this to work for Etsy**
As you continue filling out your item info, you will need to link to your listing on Etsy. Now, if you just go and copy your listing link from your shop it will show up like this, and Facebook will give you an error saying your don’t own this website.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/527575809/night-sky-phone-case-stars-starry-night
^ This is bad, you need to fix you link by adding your shop name where the “www” is like this:
https://25hourday.etsy.com/listing/527575809/night-sky-phone-case-stars-starry-night
This is absolutely crucial!! If you take anything away from this article it should be how to format the links correctly.
Finally, make sure to add your price and condition, then click Next. You’ll notice that it takes a bit for your item to appear as an active product on Facebook since it needs to go through approval, this usually takes a few minutes. Go ahead and add 1-2 more products into your catalog since it tends to speed up your approval for instagram shopping.
Next, in the menu on the left click on “shops” right below “catalog”.
From here you want to click “edit” shop. Here you can modify what your actual storefront looks like, I kept it simple and just added one listing as “featured” and then FB automatically shows your other listings below.
5. Apply for Instagram Shopping
Head back over to your instagram app while logged into your business account. From your profile, go into the menu on the top right and click the link to “Set Up Instagram Shopping.
This will walk you through linking your facebook account and your facebook page/shop. This includes connecting the catalog you just created. You will also be asked to confirm your shop domain name, make sure you have this as YOURSHOPNAME.etsy.com as we did in the step above. If you get an error about your domain name from instagram, just make sure to double check you links in the products you made in the previous step. Once you get through all that, complete the process by submitting your shop for review.
6. Confirm Your Domain
Once you’ve applied for instagram shopping you will see a notification that it is pending review. You will also might get a notification that you need to verify your domain to use the shopping feature. Once you click through, click the button to verify through email. This will go to your associated business email and it will take you back to Facebook to a section on Brand Safety > Domains.
If you’re not sure if you’ve done this step, or you don’t have a notification to do this, you can go to that page by following this link.
Here you will add your domain name as YOURSHOPNAME.etsy.com. Once that is entered, you will see the following options. Go ahead and click “Meta-tag verification”. Go ahead and copy the bold text shown in Step 1.
Next, head over to Etsy into your shop manager. Go to Settings > Facebook shops. In the space go ahead and paste that verification code, only include everything in the content=””.
For example, my full code was <meta name=”facebook-domain-verification” content=”b627won6v8kn6ensywrbp3ct6t3aa7“”/> and I will only enter the text shown in bold. After that, click confirm.
Head on back to the facebook page and click “Verify”. You will get a pop up confirming if this worked after a few seconds.
7. Wait for Approval
Well done, you made it through all the steps! Now you just wait for a notification from instagram that you have been approved for shopping. This is said to take around 24 hours but mine went through in about 2. Bookmark this page so you can come back once you’re approved!
8. Once Approved – Tag Your Products
Yay! You’re approved! Now that it’s done, you can start tagging your products. You will need to first create a post showing your product, or just go to an existing post. Once you’ve picked your post, go an edit it. You will now see an option on the image to tag your product. When you click this, you will pick a product from that catalog you created earlier to link. Once you do this, make sure to save.
Each post that has a tagged product will now show up with the shopping bag icon to show that it’s shoppable. You will notice there is also now a link to view the shop located under your profile bio as well as a shopping icon to sort your posts. If you use Stories, you can also now tag your products there! Just make sure you’re constantly adding your products to the catalog on Facebook as you did earlier so you can continue tagging them on Insta. I like to do this as I make new instagram posts.
I hope you enjoyed these instructions! Make sure to check out the other articles for more Etsy help. If you have any issues just leave a comment or shoot me a message.
