Instagram Shop Grid
⚡️ You're in the right article if you're looking to…
- drive traffic to your website from Instagram.
- create a clickable grid of Instagram posts.
⭐️ This feature is on our paid plans.
In this article:
- What is Shop Grid?
- Setting up your Shop Grid page and updating your Instagram bio link
- Adding links to your Instagram images
- How your followers will see your page
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is Shop Grid?
Imagine this. You‘re about to publish a beautiful post on Instagram, and you want to direct your audience to your website to learn more. You try to include a link in your post caption, but you remember that Instagram doesn’t support hyperlinks in posts. You could change the link in your bio, but what if you want to send your audience to a different page for your next post?
This is where Buffer's Shop Grid comes in! With Shop Grid, you can add a link to each of your posts, all accessible via one link in your bio.
Setting up your Shop Grid page and updating your Instagram bio link
To get started, select your Instagram account on the left hand side of your dashboard and head over to the Shop Grid tab.
Within the Shop Grid tab, you'll see your latest 100 published posts, along with any scheduled posts in your queue. You'll see a clock icon on any scheduled posts and if you hover over it, you'll see the time it's due to be published. Posts without the clock icon are those that have already been published to Instagram.
You're able to add up to three custom links that will display at the top of your Shop Grid page. These are links that you may wish to highlight to your followers. Examples might include a link to your online store homepage, a link to new arrivals, or maybe a link to register for an upcoming event. Start by clicking the Add Link button. Enter your link text and URL and click Save Link. You can set the color of your links by clicking Link Color and can update these links as frequently as you wish.
Use the Preview Page button to see how your page looks. This is the link you’ll want to add to your Instagram bio, which will be a unique page of all your posts with the links you add here. Click the Copy Page Link icon.
Head over to https://www.instagram.com/ and click Edit Profile. Copy and paste the link from Shop Grid into the Website field and click Submit.
Adding links to your Instagram images
The easiest way to add a link is to include it when you're scheduling a post. Add the link you'd like to direct users to within the Shop Grid Link field.
⚠️ Some important things to note:
- Team members who do not have full posting access are unable to add or edit links into Shop Grid.
- If your post is scheduled as a notification, unfortunately, the link you include here won't be copied over. For posts scheduled as notifications, please add the link to your post within the Shop Grid tab, as described below.
You can also add links within the Shop Grid tab. Under each post, you'll see a text box where you're able to add a link. You can change this link at any time (or leave it blank), and your page will be updated automatically.
📝 Only posts with links will be displayed on your Shop Grid page.
❓ Can our Customer Advocacy team answer any questions for you? Feel free to reach out via hello@buffer.com.
How your followers will see your page
Your Instagram account image and custom links will be displayed at the top of your page, and all of your posts will be displayed below. When viewed on desktop, users will see a "View" link when hovering over an image, and clicking on the link will take them to the link you added to the post.
Here's an example page viewed on desktop:
And here's the same example page viewed on mobile (where most viewers are likely to see it):
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between Buffer’s Shop Grid and Start Page?
Is Shop Grid the same as Instagram's product tagging feature?
Shop Grid is a Buffer feature rather than an Instagram feature. It is not the same as Instagram's product tagging feature. The posts displayed on your Instagram feed will not be clickable. They will only be clickable on the unique page that you can link within your bio.
How will multi-image posts display on my Shop Grid page?
Posts that include multiple images will be shown on your Shop Grid page (assuming you've added a link), but only the first image will be visible.
How will video posts display on my Shop Grid page?
Posts that include a video will be shown on your Shop Grid page (assuming you've added a link), but the video will be shown as a static image.
Is it possible to track clicks on Shop Grid links?
We do not offer any tracking on Shop Grid links at the moment, but you can add UTM parameters to your links and then track them in Google Analytics. UTM parameters are tags that are added to the end of a URL, which help to track the effectiveness of a campaign, or more specifically in this context, the effectiveness of a link associated with an Instagram post that you publish. If you have hundreds or thousands of visitors to your website each month, it's helpful to know where that traffic is coming from.
The UTM parameters that have been set, will then appear in Google Analytics as the links direct traffic to the particular website. This tracking can be found within the Acquisitions section of Google Analytics.
Select Acquisitions on the left hand side and then click Campaigns, followed by All Campaigns. This is where you can track the different campaigns that have been created and the traffic that has been generated. You’ll see a list of all the campaigns you’ve been tracking and you can click on each to view the full details. You can filter for different Campaigns, Sources and Mediums, which have been added to the URLs.
What happens if I delete an image from my Instagram feed natively?
If an image is deleted from your Instagram feed natively, it would also delete from your Shop Grid page.
What happens to my Shop Grid page if I remove my Instagram account from Buffer?
If you remove your Instagram account from Buffer, your Shop Grid page will also be deleted. If you (or someone else) visited the link, you would be redirected to the Shop Grid page on the Buffer website. If you were to reconnect your Instagram account later on, your Shop Grid page would be created again, with the same link, since the URL is "https://shopgr.id/" followed by your Instagram handle. However, you would need to add any links back to your posts.