The Best Instagram Tools to Use for Your E-Commerce Brand

Instagram is an e-commerce brand’s best friend. It’s a visual-centric platform that provides an array of shopping features for online businesses, and not to mention one of the biggest and fastest-growing social media networks out there with over 1 billion users.

As if Instagram wasn’t already an e-commerce marketing behemoth — with the introduction of features like Shops, Reels, and Guides — there is a staggering variety of tools available to help you get the most value out of it.

Continue reading to learn more about why e-commerce brands should consider selling on Instagram and the best Instagram tools you can use to take your brand to the next level.

Why Online Retailers Should Use Instagram

If you’re wondering why Instagram should be included in your sales strategy, take a look at these key statistics:

• Over 70% of users are under the age of 35
• 500 million users use Instagram Stories every day
• 50% of users follow at least one brand
• Instagram can generate over four times the amount of engagement than Facebook
• Instagram has helped 80% of users decide whether they want to purchase a product or service

Are you convinced yet? Let’s take a look at how to use Instagram tools to boost your e-commerce brand.

Best Instagram Tools for E-commerce

1. Instagram Shopping

Price: Free

Free Trial: n/a

Instagram Shopping is an ideal solution for businesses looking to boost their mobile shopping experience with a trustworthy site that has billions of users.

As a feature within Instagram, there is no cost attached to set it up. But it’s important to note that a Facebook Shop or Catalog is required in order to use Instagram Shopping, along with meeting Instagram’s eligibility requirements.

Source: Facebook

Key Features of Instagram Shopping

• No additional costs as its a feature within Instagram
• Add up to five product tags per image (or up to twenty per carousel)
• Add product information to product tags, including cost and currency
• A “View Shop” button is added to your profile, allowing you to curate a shopping experience for your audience

2. Linkin.bio

Price: Free options available for individuals

Free Trial: n/a

Adding links to your Instagram isn’t easy. With very few options — other than one link in your bio and the option to “Swipe Up” for accounts with over 10,000 followers — businesses need to get creative in how they drive traffic to their products and services. That’s where Linkin.bio comes in.

Linkin.bio essentially allows you to turn your Instagram feed into a shoppable gallery by creating a landing page that looks just like your Instagram feed. This is a handy alternative to Instagram Shopping, especially if you don’t have a Facebook Shop or Catalog set up.

Source: Later

Key Features of Linkin.Bio

• Allows you to replicate your Instagram feed, allowing users to find posts easily
• Track insights like clicks, page views, and sales from each post
• Advanced plans can be integrated with Shopify

3. Iconosquare

Price: From $49 per month

Free Trial: 14 days

Instagram’s built-in business analytics are strong: Users can view impressions, reach, engagement, follower demographics, and more. There’s plenty of features included in Instagram Insights to keep small e-commerce stores going. But for those online businesses seeking new heights, it’s worth checking out Iconosquare.

Key Features of Iconosquare

• Provides a comprehensive breakdown of your Instagram data, from follower growth to post performance in real-time.
• Users can search by custom time periods. This is great for tracking individual campaigns, either in real-time or retrospectively.
• In-depth analysis of follower growth/decline over time, letting you drill down into this data to see who followed (or unfollowed) you.
• Iconosquare provides a daily email report to give you an oversight of your Instagram performance. And with a competitive pricing system, Iconosquare is perfect for businesses wishing to scale up.

Not convinced? Iconosquare was instrumental in helping activewear brand Gymshark track its Instagram campaigns. Its in-depth content and metrics analysis helped the brand create focused marketing strategies that grew its followers by more than 50%.

Source: Iconosquare

4. SocialRank

Price: From $199 per year

Free Trial: n/a

Macro influencers are dead. Long live micro-influencers!

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly true. But micro-influencers are a valuable asset for e-commerce brands. Despite commanding fewer followers than their macro counterparts (between 2K and 10K), micro-influencers can deliver much higher engagement.

Micro-influencers are effective and affordable, especially on Instagram, and with SocialRank, they’re super easy to find too. If your e-commerce brand is working (or considering) with influencers, SocialRank is for you.

Acquired by TruFan in 2019, SocialRank is an audience segmentation platform that allows users to identify, organize, and manage followers across Instagram and Twitter.

Source: Social Rank

Key Features of SocialRank

• Get analytics on the number of verified followers, fake follower percentage, gender split, top countries/states/cities, languages, and more.
• Helps brand spot brand advocates and micro-influencers to collaborate with.
• Easy to use: search by keyword and sort by follow count to find your most influential fans.
• Offers a range of exporting options.

5. WishPond

Price: From $44 per month

Free Trial: 14 days

Competitions, contests, and giveaways are key for Instagram marketers. They can increase your brand awareness, follower count, boost engagement and sales, increase your email subscriber list… The possibilities are virtually endless.

But organizing and managing such opportunities can be time-consuming — unless you use Wishpond’s Social Promotion tool.

Wishpond’s Instagram Hashtag Contest App makes it easy to create, launch, and manage hashtag photo contests. Simply create a branded hashtag for your competition, and Wishpond will track and collate every post tagged with it.

The tool also lets you assign set rules and parameters to your competition. For example, you could make it a competition requirement to include your account handle or tag three other people.

Track engagement to see how successful your contests are, and use it to make your next one even better.

Source: Wishpond

Key Features of Wishpond

• Built-in analytics interface lets you track your competition’s performance in real-time
• Collect images/user-generated content using a branded hashtag
• Entries are automatically added to the gallery

6. MobileMonkey

Price: From $14.25 per month

Free Trial: Yes

It goes without saying that for retailers, great customer service is essential for customer satisfaction and turning first-time customers into repeat customers.

MobileMonkey is a chatbot platform that can help you with – and improve – your online customer service as your business grows, and you need time to focus on your products/services.

Specifically created for Instagram marketing, MobileMonkey’s Instagram tools include automated responses for real-time customer support, a comment bot that allows you to message and engage with all commenters on a post, email capturing for lead generation, and much more.

Source: MobileMonkey

Key Features of MobileMonkey

• Save time with auto-reply bots
• Create and launch chatbot campaigns in Messenger for Instagram, Facebook, and more.
• Ability to offer customers real-time support
• Capture email addresses for lead generation

Selecting the Right Instagram Tools for Your Business

Instagram should be the cornerstone of your e-commerce social media marketing strategy. But while it offers brands a variety of benefits out of the box, it’s worth investing in one or more of the tools above. It’ll take your Instagram strategy to the next level, helping grow your online store and online community.

Need help with your e-commerce strategy? Contact TechWyse today or learn more about our e-commerce services to boost your business online, including social media management, SEO, paid media, and website development.