Ahead of the holiday season, Amazon is adding a TikTok-like shopping experience within its app. The launch of Inspire, according to Amazon, will allow consumers to browse products and ideas and shop from content created by brands, influencers, and other customers. Inspire offers a short-form video and photo feed, and is similar to how TikTok works.
According to Amazon, Inspire will initially roll out to select customers in the US this month, and become widely available to US customers in the coming months.
Shoppers can access the Inspire feed by tapping the light bulb icon to get started. Upon the first launch of the app, you will be prompted to choose from over 20 interests, including skin care, makeup, plants, pets, gaming, travel, interior design, running, and more in order to personalize your Inspire feed.
Inspire will offer support for photos in addition to focusing on short-form video content. Just like the way it works on Instagram, you can double-tap anywhere on the screen to “like” the content with a red heart.
When you come across something you like, you can tap on the small buttons at the bottom of the window that links to the product on Amazon. At the start, a tap on these buttons will pop-up the product in an overlay window on top of the video, a tap on the “See all details”, however, will take you to the item’s product page where you can find out more, initiate a purchase, or add to a list, according to TechCrunch.
As with most AI-inspired features these days, Amazon said the feed will learn more about your interests by tracking your engagement and likes. The online ecommerce giant plans to add more shoppable features to Inspire to further improve the feature in the long-term.
“We invent every day to make shopping easy and fun,” said Amazon Shopping director Oliver Messenger in a statement per TechCrunch. “Inspire is our new shopping experience that connects Amazon customers with shoppable content created by other customers, the latest influencers, and a wide range of brands. In just a few taps, customers can discover new products or get inspiration on what to buy, all tailored to their interests, and then shop for those items on Amazon,” Messenger said.
