River Island rolls out tech to make Instagram feed shoppable

River Island is rolling out new technology to power discovery-driven purchasing.

The high street retailer teamed up with social commerce specialist Curalate to “to align social shopping experiences on and away from its website.” A new Like2Buy feature makes River Island’s Instagram feed shoppable, while harnessing user generated content tagged #ImWearingRI by displaying it on a shoppable gallery onsite.

Commenting on the new feature in a statement, Gemma Scarfe, head of e-commerce at River Island, said: “As a fashion forward brand, we want to create content in the best and most relevant way for our customers. We are not only making this content shoppable across platforms but curating it in a clever way that encourages further engagement on riverisland.com.”

River Island is also using Curalate’s Showroom function, which turns any image or video into a virtual pop up shop, meaning shoppers can discover and directly purchase recommended products from any social post.

“Visual content is the new storefront, helping people imagine products in their lives,” said Apu Gupta, CEO of Curalate. “In order for commerce to flow, these images need to inspire to the point of purchase. River Island will turn fans into shoppers by influencing product consideration early in the customer journey and motivating them to buy items they weren’t necessarily looking for.”

Photo credit: River Island, Facebook