If you are a fan of Instagram then you already know you can find goods and services via this social networking website. Many business owners advertise their products here and they have excellent reasons to do this. With over 500 million visitors daily, Instagram has the potential to bring serious business to your site. It gets even better. According to reliable statistics, over 130 million Instagram users engage with shopping posts. These are some big numbers right there.

In the past, Instagram users had to leave the site then log on to the seller's website in order to buy goods and services online. Now, this is an inconvenience and a waste of valuable time. The good news is that customers can now buy goods and services directly from Instagram without leaving the site or navigating to the seller's website. BigCommerce has teamed up with Facebook to unlock checkout on Instagram. In simple English, this means that if you are just looking at Instagram pages and you see any product you like, you can buy it immediately without having to log out of Instagram and log on to the seller's website. Below are three advantages of this innovative development.

Meet Customers Where They Are

One of the best things about shopping online is that the seller offers goods and services to the customers in real time. You do not have to commute to some offline shop somewhere and waste valuable time in traffic. Now, checkout on Instagram offers online shoppers instant availability of products. For the 130 million shoppers on Instagram, this feature means that the seller meets the customer where they are. In effect, you have a safe, fast and convenient shopping alternative right here on Instagram.

Simple and Secure Platform

This innovation creates a wonderful social media shopping experience for Instagram users. You probably had some favorite products already but you could not access these products directly in the past. Now, BigCommerce has just given you the opportunity to shop for all your favorite brands directly from your Instagram page. You can even store payment credentials and make future purchases seamlessly on Instagram. This gives you fast, secure and simple transactions all the time. 

If you want to setup an online store and sell products over the Internet, you'll need an ecommerce platform like BigCommerce. The hosting service provides everything that you will need to setup your store and run it. You can design your store simply with a range of templates that are provided or dig in deeper with HTML and CSS customization. Like other hosted solutions, you are dependent on the platform for operation, so make sure you look at all options before making a final conclusion. Other options include Volusion, Jimdo, Squarespace and Shopify.

Long-Term Solution

Companies that currently use BigCommerce include Gibson Guitars, TravelPro and Toyota, so you know they will be around for the foreseeable future. The other option is build your own store on top of a free solution like WordPress. But that requires additional costs, time, and expertise to get everything running and to keep it current.

BigCommerce Plans Available

The Standard package is only $30 a month, while the Plus is $80 and the Pro plan runs $250 a month. The Plus plan comes with additional marketing tools and an abandoned cart tool to recapture sales. All plans come with 10 templates, payment option integration, account creation, SEO options, image optimization, email marketing services, coupon and voucher features, review of product functionality, blogging and reporting. In comparison to other eCommerce options on the market, the standard package is very good for the low introductory price.