The Instagram swipe-up feature is going to disappear soon. Instagram plans to retire the swipe-up link, which lets people visit external web pages by swiping up, starting August 30th, 2021.
Instead of the swipe-up link, users will be able to use clickable link stickers in stories that will lead them to external pages. Some Instagram users have already moved to stickers.
The company says it’s retiring the swipe up to “streamline the stories creation experience” and offer more “creative control.”
In June, Instagram started testing these stickers for various accounts, not just users who already had swipe up privileges - not for verified users only or those having at least 10,000 followers.
During the test, the stickers fit more with the way people currently use the platform. The goal was to roll out the stickers more widely.
The critical difference between the two features, apart from the apparent gesture difference, is that viewers can respond to stories with a link sticker but cannot respond to swipe-up stories.
Instagram says that for now, only people who had swipe-up feature available will receive the sticker option, but that it’s “still evaluating” rolling it out to more users. This update will “help us determine whether it’s the right decision before expanding access to more people”.
How The Removal of Instagram Swipe Up Feature Influences Business and Creators
Globally, the changes aren’t significant. Using the Instagram swipe-up feature to attract traffic to your site, you can equally use the link sticker. What remains unchanged is that Instagram still doesn’t allow you to use clickable links in captions and restricts your right to add links in stories if your followership is under 10k.
But here’s what can be done instead to attract more traffic to your site:
Increase Your Website Traffic with Instagram Shopping Features
Shopping posts let your customers get all the information about a product by just tapping on a post showing is. Some users can even check out right within the native Instagram app. This novelty is believed to be expanded on all other users soon.
Single Instagram shopping posts allow you to tag up to 5 products, and carousels let you add up to 20 items.
Apart from shopping posts, you can also leverage shopping stories and even sell with clickable links during Instagram live broadcasts. All you need to do is to add a sticker that links to your product on your site and drive Instagram traffic this way.
You can add your product tags in different languages if your website is localised in more than one language.
Increase Your Website Traffic with Link in Bio by Combin Scheduler
Since Instagram doesn’t let users add clickable links in captions, so you can add a custom link in your bio right when you plan your next publication using Combin Scheduler.
With this feature, you don’t need to waste your time adding the required link manually after publication. Just type the link in the field under your caption, and it will appear in your bio automatically.
The course of action is already familiar to you: start planning your story within the app, select the publishing date and time, and then add a custom link that will appear on your bio when the story goes live.
Within the app, you can add multiple stories in-bulk and add an individual link for each of them. So when you do other more important tasks, Stories will be published automatically, and the link will be changed by default, as well.
Increase Your Website Traffic with CTA in Captions And Bio
Social media managers, business owners and creators include call-to-actions in their captions for a reason. CTA helps your audience understand what you expect them to do after looking at your post.
So each time when you tell about something in your captions to sell it, don’t just casually let people know about it but use CTAs to incite their interest.
You can also add a call to action in your bio. Just right above your link, add a call to read, register, buy or whatever to do to lead people to your website.
Increase Your Website Traffic with Instagram And Facebook Ads
Organic or automated promotion is all good when it comes to Instagram page growth. Still, it’s silly to deny that now it’s impossible to elevate your account without paid ads.
Instagram sponsored posts that include a website link by default are an actionable way to boost your webpage traffic. If your paid social ads are set up correctly, your revenue from sales will exceed the costs spent on ads.
The trick is to define your target audience and similar users properly, then you will hit the bullseye.
Increase Your Website Traffic with Influencers
Instagram influencers typically have a loyal and engaged audience ready to listen and buy. No matter if it’s a celebrity with more than a million followers or a nano-influencer with 2k, if the audience is engaged, you will inevitably increase sales or, at least, brand awareness.
To make that happen, you need to make sure you fulfil two conditions (to say the least):
- The influencer is relevant to your brand and audience.
- The influencer’s audience is real and engaged people, not bots.
Also, don't forget to add links to DM messages and IGTV descriptions.
Now, more and more businesses and creators are moving from swipe-ups to stickers as they find them to be a more convenient way to share their site pages. So far, the swipe-up feature is not completely gone, so you can test these two ways to bring Instagram audience to your website and check which one works best for you.