What is with Instagram’s new shop tab?
beginning of Instagram’s ecommerce journey
Recently Instagram the position of notification tab with shopping tab. So why did Instagram replace the with notification tab even though there are other alternatives for placement of feature? Why didn’t they try the option to give the new place? Was changing the notification tabs position solved the problem?
So this makes me wonder why? As this is my observation and my opinion so there might be an unpopular one and this is my say regarding the new change in UI and this will certainly change the user’s experiences. As per my experience, I was too much hooked to the notification tab and this was one of the frequent places to tap and check. Before this was popular for stalking. This is how users were glued to this tab for such a long time. So shifting the notification to a new place might be hard for a few days, but people will easily adapt to this change.
So, I think this is how designers at Instagram thought of picking a notification tab as this was one of the favorable tabs to replace from its bottom navigation and keep in the top navigation. Besides, this somehow serves the purpose as top navigation shows the personal information i.e. messages and notification while bottom navigation focuses on delivering contents.
The shopping tab is for eCommerce and all business stuff and this is what they want to promote. With more than a billion users this might be the perfect time for business as their previous income was with the advertisement only. And this subtle change in design will certainly create a bigger impact. Furthermore replacing notification will make the presence of the shopping system in a short duration as users are likely to be unconsciously tapping that place for notification. This is how people will adapt towards its new feature, also, they planned to keep towards the right side.
Studies show that there are approximately 90% are the right user.
Many users are right-handed and with lazy use cases, many will have the habit of using with the right hand. So the tab on the right side is likely to be visited as distance matters for such users. It is just psychology that people will surely visit what is near to them. This might be a reason for the placement of the tab on the right side. This might be a reason that message and notification icons are kept on the right side.
Maybe people are addicted to the message and notification so they will check them frequently so placing them anywhere won’t matters and this might be another reason for replacing specifically notification tab from the bottom navigation.
Thus, the new UI serves the purpose to integrate the new feature.
No wonder this might be a small step for making something grand in the future. Maybe Zuckerberg wants to make Instagram a competitor of the e-commerce site. We don’t know what it may be like, for now, a simple change is in UI and we are experiencing the change.
