11 Ways to Design Your eCommerce Page on Instagram
Once upon a time — in 2010, to be specific — Instagram was nothing but another social platform filled with pictures of cats, food, and selfies. About 50 million users “lived” there, and no marketer ever thought of making money with it. But then, in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg came and turned Instagram into the platform connecting brands with customers.
Now Instagram welcomes 1 billion monthly active users, releases dozens of new tools for businesses, and has 58x more engagement per follower than Facebook.
It stands to reason that many brands, especially online retailers, give up other social media platforms to focus on Instagram.
Why?
Instagram is about visual content, so it gives eCommerce brands massive opportunities to showcase their products. Millions of businesses have got it already, making Instagram an essential component of their marketing strategy.
About 72% of Instagram users are active online shoppers. It makes the platform a powerful instrument for reaching and engaging a broader audience. The more engaged the audience, the more sales. Right?
Thanks to Instagram features for business, marketers have a good scope of work to get creative, overtake competitors, and use alternative methods of sales.
Specifically, they can design Instagram accounts to make their eCommerce pages more visually appealing.
Do you want users to not only open your business page but also follow you on Instagram? Then fill your profile with actionable and spectacular content! Beautiful and eye-catching designs hook more Instagrammers who you can then turn into customers.
How?
Here are 11 tips and examples on how to design your eCommerce page on Instagram for your inspiration. You will see that you don’t need to be a professional designer to impress Instagram users. The content of your eCommerce page on Instagram can cause WOW-effect and make subscribers crave more.
Weave a Net
Your marketing success on Instagram depends on eye-catching images. It can take time and effort to source or create them. Worse yet, some marketers are “lucky” enough to promote products or services that seem difficult or impossible to visualize. But if you rely on some basic principles of illustration and graphic design, you can still create an engaging eCommerce page on Instagram.
Try this:
a) Chess
Place Instagram images in chessboard order, rotating them one by one. For instance, you can mix photos with quotes. Or you can rotate hard images with pastel ones.
Ocean’s Desire and Lorraine Loots are brands that get the most out of this trick.
Don’t be afraid of the craziest ideas — weave a unique “net” for your images you use for your eCommerce page on Instagram. If you promote an online store, you can mix product photos with text marketing content. Customer feedback or short “how to” manuals will work best here. Just decide on content types that would be most relevant and engaging for your Instagram account.
b) Lines
Another simple yet effective trick to designing your eCommerce page on Instagram is to design every row like a separate subject. Feel free to group images by color, style, content types, etc. Like Zara and Tiffany & Co. do:
Vertical lines look great, too. Follow the lead of Aleksey Zozulya, a New-York based photographer:
c) Diagonals
The same approach works if you place visually alike photos diagonally. As in the case with rows, you can publish three pictures at once. Otherwise, rows will be misaligned and the beauty of your design will disappear.
Taken from the Phoebe Soup account.
The “net” format is popular with online shops, fashion designers, beauty and tattoo saloons. To make it work even better, you can mix detail shots with wide shots to build a complete idea of your product or service among customers.
Build a Frame
Frames make a picture more appealing. They allow a user to concentrate on a particular element of the whole image. By framing each photo for your eCommerce page on Instagram, you’ll turn it into a piece of art in the eyes of subscribers.
Examples:
a) Geometrical frames
Squares, rectangles, cycles — feel free to experiment with forms and see what fits the nature of your eCommerce page on Instagram better. Try frames of different sizes and shapes to place a greater focus on marketing images.
b) Colorful frames
Don’t they look terrific on Instagram accounts?
To create framed pictures, marketers use pre-designed templates or user-friendly editors like BeFunky, Crello, Framatic, and others. These tools have already gained a reputation of SMM specialists and non-designer marketers’ best friends.
Use Image Blocks
Instagram users are challenging to impress today. It seems they’ve seen everything and marketers have no ace in the hole to get their message across effectively. You know that content quality matters, but five in ten social media specialists know it too. To stand out from the crowd and acquire links for better Google ranking, you need to practice an alternative approach for your eCommerce page on Instagram.
One way to do that: Use image blocks.
a) Collage
This design is hard to ignore. Scrolling a beautiful collage on Instagram, users may lose track of time because all visual elements drift into each other seamlessly.
Some great examples of this are from Anna Lena Illustrations and Casey McPerry:
This trick is perfect to use when you promote a blog or content heavy site on Instagram. Prominent columns guide followers through the page; complementary elements of design help them understand what your blog is about.
b) Puzzle
Here’s a trick to make creating a group of images even easier: cut one image in 9-12 pieces. This trick works great for creating your eCommerce page on Instagram. Puzzles help to cover all elements of a high-converting Instagram ad in one place.
Also, they make it easier to promote photography, illustrations, fashion, and other types of creative projects. Food business, for example. Just take a look at what Reynolds Kitchens and Leal Klots do:
But if you want to post collages and puzzles to your Instagram account, it’s best to know how to work with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom or similar tools. They make creating groups of images like this a snap.
Experiment With Colors
Like it or not, the psychology of color remains a must-know aspect for marketers if they want to influence consumers’ perceptions and persuade them to buy. A color palette that you choose for your eCommerce page on Instagram can cause a definite response from people. Keep this in mind when you decide what colors to choose for your Instagram marketing profile.
Also, remember that a human brain can see only three objects at once. That’s why the rule of thirds is so powerful in design, writing, and other spheres of life. Don’t use more than three core colors for profiles on Instagram.
a) Core colors
Black-and-white photos look trendy in many cases but they can be a bit monotonous for an eCommerce page on Instagram. You’re better to focus on several core colors to use in content. See how Sheiku and string & bloom make the most of just a few colors.
Do you have brand colors? Use them for your eCommerce page on Instagram to build awareness and help followers recognize you better. Or, just choose colors that fit your brand image and influence your customers’ perception best.
b) Mood and tone
When you design visual content for Instagram, make sure to use the same settings time after time. It will make all the photos look comprehensive and stylish. Whether they are bright or dark or airy-fairy, they need to correspond with the tone of voice of your brand.
Check out the consistent imagery used by the Lunar Alchemist and Leaves & Butterflies below:
To achieve this consistency, you need to use the same filter for all photos in your eCommerce page on Instagram. Whatever the niche, this will help to balance all visual elements.
Choose a Style
The best Instagram brand profiles have a few things in common:
- a searchable username
- a recognizable profile picture
- a creative yet informative bio with trackable links in it
- high-quality pictures
- regular posting
What makes them stand out is a unique style aka a schtick. It becomes the hook that captures followers and invites newcomers to subscribe.
a) Shooting plan and angle
Choose a shooting angle for all photos on your eCommerce page on Instagram and adhere to it. This trick makes your brand easy to distinguish, especially if you need to stand out from a crowd of similar competitors. See how Ida Frosk and Tiny Planet make the most of this approach:
Cafes, food delivery services, along with makeup and tattoo artists use this technique very successfully.
b) Individual gimmicks
Black-and-white photos, minimalism, pop-art, comics, doodling… You name it! Choose the gimmick that would illustrate the character of your brand best. Designers, illustrators, architects, and painters know this trick and successfully use it to promote their eCommerce page on Instagram.
Some great examples of more gimmicks are the profiles of Soul Minimalist and Rachel Ryle:
Wrap Up
You can build a visually appealing eCommerce page on Instagram even if you don’t have a professional designer on board. Just use some of the many available and easy to use tools for creating Instagram content, follow the best profiles for inspiration and ideas, try a combination of several design tricks, and don’t be afraid to experiment.
What is your favorite eCommerce page on Instagram? What do you think is the secret behind their success?
Share your thoughts in the comments below to inspire other eCommerce brands and encourage them to take the eCommerce page on Instagram to the next level.
