A new study has revealed five key contributing factors.
With clickable (read trackable) links still an absent feature of Instagram, the reality of whether or not images posted on the platform actually translate to sales remains a crucial question for brands and marketers alike.
Despite the absence of any quantitative data, a more qualitative study often confirms that the majority of brands using Instagram have seen some (possibly a lot) of sales generated from their own or others’ (think magazines, bloggers, and other influential Instagrammers) posts. With this in mind, the more important question for brands has become what type of images are driving these sales, and how they are able to commercially capitalise on this information.
It was only a matter of time, then, before the proliferation of Instagram users sparked a formal study into the matter.
Purush Papatla, professor of marketing at The University of Wisconsin called on Olapic (a crowdsourcing site allowing online stores to host consumer-generated images on its product pages) to give him access to the site’s data in order to determine which images have the highest sales conversion rate. Using this data, Papatla and his research team were able to track the purchase behaviour of people who had viewed the images over a six-month period.
The study identified five (somewhat surprising) common elements in Instagram photos that eventually inspired a purchase:
• High levels of yellow or blue (contrary to existing data on colour connotations – such as red evokes a higher level of excitement).
• Longer captions.
• No question marks or exclamations.
• No filters.
• From infrequent posters with high follower counts.
Noticeably absent from the list is the number of ‘Likes’ and comments an image receives, suggesting the evaluation methods many brands are currently using is – in a commercial sense – somewhat irrelevant.
Co-founder of Olapic Pau Sabria says the study’s findings will have implications for retailers:
“When trying to define a visual strategy [brands] will have to try to pursue [engagement and sales conversion separately]” and “use a mix of criteria when curating Instagram photos.”
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