Using an Instagram feed on your online store (without shoppable tags)

First, the honest part: this feed is not shoppable

Social Feed by grip space shows your Instagram posts on your website as photos and videos. It does not support shoppable posts or product tags. A shopper cannot tap a sweater in one of your photos and see its price, pick a size or add it to the cart from the feed. Product tags you have added on Instagram are not shown on the website either.

When a visitor clicks a post in the feed, one of three things happens, depending on the setting you choose for that widget: the post opens larger in a lightbox on your page, the post opens on Instagram in a new tab, or nothing happens. None of these leads to a product page by itself.

That is not a reason to skip a feed. It just means the feed has a different job. Instead of being a second catalog, it is an inspiration gallery: real photos of your products being worn, used, styled, unboxed and talked about, sitting next to the catalog you already have. The rest of this article is about doing that job well.

Instagram Shopping and a website feed are two different tools

It is easy to mix these up, because both involve your products and your Instagram account. Instagram Shopping is Meta’s feature for tagging products inside Instagram. On Shopify, for example, it runs through the Facebook and Instagram by Meta channel, and Shopify’s help lists conditions such as being in a supported country or region, meeting Meta’s product requirements, having an approved Instagram business profile and a Meta product catalog. Those tags live on Instagram, for people browsing Instagram.

A website feed works in the other direction. It brings your Instagram posts to people who are already on your store. The two can be used together: tag products on Instagram for Instagram users, and show the same posts on your site as an inspiration gallery.

What a feed adds to a store

Product photos on a store are usually clean, consistent and a little sterile. They are good for comparing items, but they rarely answer the questions a shopper has in mind: How does this look on a real person? How big is it next to a coffee cup? What do I wear it with? Is this brand still active, or is the store half abandoned? An Instagram feed can help with all of these, because it is made of the photos you post for people, not for a catalog.

1. Styling and context. Outfits, room shots, flat lays and table settings show how products fit into someone’s life.
2. Scale and detail. A product in a hand or next to everyday objects shows its size better than measurements alone.
3. New arrivals before they reach the homepage banner. If you post new items on Instagram first, a feed puts them on the site without extra work.
4. Signs of life. Recent posts show that someone is running the shop this week, which can matter to first-time buyers who do not know you yet.
5. The people behind the brand. Studio, packing table, makers and suppliers, which belong naturally on an About page.

What the feed does not add is any information a shopper needs to buy: price, sizes, stock, shipping and return terms. Those belong in your store, as text.

Making the gallery lead somewhere

Because posts in the feed do not link to products, the page around the feed has to do that. A feed with nothing next to it is a nice picture wall and little more. A feed with clear paths into the catalog becomes a browsing aid. A few simple techniques make the difference:

1. Give the section a heading that points somewhere. “Styled by us, shop the collection” with a button to the collection page is more useful than “Follow us on Instagram”.
2. Put collection links directly under the feed. If the feed is filtered to one collection, add a button to that collection. If it shows everything, add two or three buttons to your main categories.
3. Name products in your captions. When the feed is set to open posts in a lightbox with the caption shown, a shopper who likes a photo can read “Linen shirt in sage, from the Summer collection” and search for it in your store. Captions are only shown in the lightbox, not on the tiles.
4. Keep your store search easy to reach. A shopper who saw a product in the gallery will often go straight to search. Make sure it is visible near the feed, especially on phones.
5. Use the follow button for the right audience. The account header can show a follow button with your own label. On a store, a label such as “Follow for new arrivals” tells visitors why following is worth it.

Where the feed fits on a store

The embed code is one script tag, and the feed appears where you paste it. You can use several widgets with different settings on different pages, if your plan allows several widgets. Here is how the common store pages compare:

For general advice on placement and its effect on page speed, see where to put an Instagram feed on your website.

Product pages need extra care

A product page is where the decision happens, so anything added there has to earn its place. A feed belongs below the parts that sell: photos, price, variant selection, the add-to-cart button, description, shipping information and reviews. Never between the price and the button.

There is also a technical point that surprises many store owners. On most platforms, product pages share a template. If you add the feed to the product template, every product that uses that template shows the same feed, with the same posts. The feed does not know which product a shopper is looking at, so it cannot automatically pick posts about that product.

You can still make product page feeds relevant by grouping:

1. Decide on a few product groups that look different in photos, for example rings and necklaces, or mugs and plates.
2. Create one widget per group, each with an “Only matching posts” caption keyword such as “#ourrings”.
3. If your platform lets you assign different templates to different products, put each widget on the matching template. On Shopify, for example, compatible themes let you create an alternate product template in the theme editor and choose it in the Theme template setting of each product.
4. If your platform has only one product template, use one general widget for all products, filtered to styling posts rather than to a single group.

If none of this fits your setup, it is fine to leave product pages without a feed and use it on the homepage and collection pages instead.

Filter recipes for online stores

Each widget can filter posts by caption keywords (show only matching posts, or hide matching posts), by date (any time, the last 30, 90 or 365 days) and by type: Reels can be included, excluded or shown alone, and carousel posts and video posts can each be switched off. A post has to pass every filter you set. Use these as starting points and replace the words with the ones in your own captions:

Posts announcing that something is sold out or that a sale has ended are useful on Instagram the day you post them and confusing on your website a month later. Hiding them with a keyword filter, or limiting the date range, keeps old news off the store.

Make your captions work like collection labels

The keyword filter only looks at the text of your captions. That makes your captions the system that sorts posts into collections. If you are starting a feed on a store, it is worth agreeing on a small set of hashtags for internal sorting and using them every time.

1. One hashtag per collection or product group. Something unlikely to appear by accident, such as “#ourlinen” rather than “linen”.
2. Short words match inside longer words. The filter looks for the keyword anywhere in the caption, without caring about upper or lower case. “ring” also matches “spring” and “earring”. A distinctive hashtag avoids this.
3. Captions only. Hashtags in comments, product tags, location tags and text inside images are not searched.
4. Add a hashtag to older posts if needed. Editing a caption on Instagram updates the text the filter sees the next time your feed is refreshed.

Settings that suit product photos

1. Grid for the homepage and lookbook, slider for narrow spots. A grid of 4 columns shows products large enough on a computer. In narrow containers the feed reduces the number of columns automatically. A slider keeps the feed to one row, which suits a product page or footer where height matters.
2. Full rows. 8 or 12 posts fill rows in a 4-column grid. The maximum per widget is 16 on Free, 30 on Light and 50 on Standard.
3. Square tiles. Tiles are square and the image is cropped from the center. If you post portrait product shots, keep the product in the middle so it is not cut off. The lightbox shows the full image.
4. Lightbox on, caption on. Shoppers stay on your store and can read the product name in the caption. If you prefer to send people to Instagram, choose “open Instagram”, which opens the post in a new tab, so your store stays open in the original one.
5. Carousels. Many stores post product sets or outfits as carousels. Set the lightbox to show all images so shoppers can flip through them; the tile shows the first image.
6. Maximum width and spacing. Match the feed to the width of your product grid so the page looks aligned. Small gaps keep the gallery compact.

Reels and videos on a store

Videos are often the most useful posts for shoppers: a garment moving, a bag being opened, a gadget in use. In the feed, videos and Reels appear as still cover images with a play mark. When a shopper opens one in the lightbox, it starts playing muted, with video controls. For some videos, for example certain posts with licensed music, Instagram does not provide the video file; those show as a still image, and the lightbox offers a link to view the post on Instagram.

A “Reels only” widget in a slider can work well as a “See it in action” strip on a product or how-to page. More detail is in how to show Instagram Reels on your website.

Store traffic and choosing a plan

Plans limit how many times a month your widgets can be displayed, and stores tend to have more page views per visitor than other sites, because shoppers browse many product pages. It is worth estimating before you choose where the feed goes.

One view is counted each time a widget is shown on a page, and views from all your widgets are added together for the month. A feed on the homepage only uses about as many views as your homepage gets. A feed in a site-wide footer uses about as many views as your whole store, including every product and collection page.

If you go over your limit in one month, the feed keeps showing until the month ends. If you are over the limit two months in a row, the feed stops displaying from the following month, and it returns in the month after one in which your views stay under the limit. Views are still counted while the feed is stopped. The dashboard shows views per widget with a chart, so you can see which placement uses the most.

On the Free plan, the feed is updated once a day and a small “Powered by Social Feed” credit is always shown; on paid plans the credit is optional. If you launch products on Instagram and want them on the site quickly, a paid plan avoids the daily wait. See what the free plan includes and the pricing section.

Speed and privacy on a store

Store owners are rightly careful about anything that slows product pages down. The feed is a small script without an iframe. In a grid, only the first row of images loads right away, and the rest load as the shopper scrolls toward them; in a slider, all images load right away, so keep the post count modest there. Images and videos load directly from Instagram’s servers. Placing the feed below the main product content means it does not compete with your product images for attention or loading time.

The widget does not set cookies or use browser storage. It counts how often it is displayed so you can see view numbers and so plan limits apply. How you mention embedded third-party content in your store’s privacy policy is your decision.

Adding the feed on your store platform

1. Make sure your Instagram account is a professional account; see Business or Creator account.
2. Sign up for Social Feed, connect Instagram and create a widget. Set the layout, post count, click action and filters in “Settings & preview”.
3. Shopify: add a Custom Liquid section in the theme editor on the page or template you want. See the Shopify guide.
4. BigCommerce: use an HTML widget in Page Builder, and check which region it lands in. See adding an Instagram feed to BigCommerce.
5. Weebly or Square Online: use the Embed Code element or the Embed code section, and check your plan. See adding an Instagram feed to Weebly or Square Online.
6. WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace or Webflow stores: see the guides for WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and Webflow, or the HTML guide for anything else.
7. Open the live store on a phone and check that prices, buttons and search are not pushed down by the feed.

Mistakes to avoid

1. Promising shoppable photos. A heading like “Shop our Instagram” suggests that tapping a photo leads to a product. Unless you add links around the feed, shoppers will be disappointed. “Get inspired” or “Styled by us” is more honest.
2. Feeds between the price and the cart button. Keep the buying path clear.
3. A site-wide footer feed on the Free plan of a busy store. Every product page view counts. Check your traffic first.
4. Old sale posts on the homepage. “Last day of the sale” months later makes a store look neglected. Hide them with keywords or a date range.
5. Expecting customer photos. The feed shows your own account’s posts. To feature a customer photo, repost it on your account with their permission, and it will appear like any other post.
6. Relying on captions for product information. Sizes, materials and prices belong on product pages, where every shopper can see them.

Frequently asked questions

Can shoppers buy directly from the feed? No. The feed has no product tags, prices or cart buttons. Shoppers buy through your store’s product pages, so put links to them next to the feed.

Will product tags I added on Instagram show on my website? No. The feed shows the photo or video and, in the lightbox, the caption and optionally the like count. Product tags stay on Instagram.

Can each product page show posts about that product? Not automatically. One widget shows the same posts wherever it is placed. You can group products and use one filtered widget per group, placed on separate product templates if your platform supports them.

Can I show photos customers post with our hashtag? No. Hashtag feeds and posts from other accounts are not supported.

We run several brands with separate Instagram accounts. Can one feed combine them? No. One feed shows posts from one account. If you connect each brand’s account, each gets its own widgets, which you can place on that brand’s pages. Every widget counts toward your plan’s widget limit.

Can I hide the feed during a sale or a site redesign? Yes. Switch the widget to Unpublished in the dashboard. The embed code then shows nothing, so you can leave it in your theme and switch it back on later.

For a wider comparison of feed tools, see our Instagram feed widget comparison.

Sources

1. Shopify Help Center, “Tagging products in Instagram posts”: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/sell-online/instagram/tagging-instagram-post
2. Shopify Help Center, “Templates”: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/themes/theme-structure/templates