Raise engagement and monetization through Instagram's shopping features
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are the product manager for Instagram Shopping, the set of features that lets people discover products from businesses and creators on Instagram and buy them. It launched in 2019 and is still a relatively young part of the app. The feature has two stated goals: increase engagement on Instagram and increase monetization.
What would you improve, and why? Choose whom you are improving it for, identify their biggest pain points, decide what to build first and explain how you would know it worked.
```hint Follow the path from post to purchase
Shopping on Instagram usually begins with a post, a Reel or a creator rather than with a search for a product. Walk that path step by step and look for where an interested person gives up.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- If engagement and monetization pull in different directions, which one wins? Does monetization mean purchases, sellers' ad spend or fees on sales made inside the app?
- Should the improvement serve shoppers, the businesses that sell, or the creators who feature products?
- Is checkout inside Instagram in scope, or should the answer assume purchases finish on the seller's own website?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- How the two stated goals connect, and which one the chosen improvement serves first
- A justified choice among shoppers, sellers and creators, and a specific segment within it
- Pain points along the path from noticing a product in content to buying it, specific to how Instagram works
- Prioritized solutions that rely on what Instagram has and a generic online store lacks, such as creators, visual content and the social graph, with trade-offs stated
- A success metric with guardrails for feed quality, seller trust and buyer protection
### Follow-up Questions
- Your change lifts purchases, but people start hiding shopping posts and scrolling less. What do you do?
- How would you keep counterfeit goods and scam sellers from eroding trust in shopping on Instagram?
- If the interviewer asked you to switch to the seller side, what would you improve for small businesses?
Overview: A product sense question about improving Instagram's shopping features, which launched in 2019 with the goals of raising engagement and monetization. It tests choosing a user segment, mapping the path from seeing a product in a post to buying it, prioritizing improvements and setting success metrics with guardrails.