The future of Instagram feeds for your website is here.
Last week we introduced the first major update to Spotlight since its launch in mid-2020, version 1.0! 🚀
This update brings with it a number of new, powerful features as well as many UI and usability improvements throughout the plugin.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the key changes introduced in Spotlight 1.0, and take a sneak peek at what’s coming next.
The future of Instagram feeds is here
A new feed creation wizard
Spotlight’s onboarding has been completely revamped. We’ve now made it even easier for you to create all types of Instagram feeds. Simply select a use-case for your feed and the wizard will guide you step-by-step.
Choose between displaying:
- Your Instagram posts – Perfect for a personal blog.
- Your tagged posts – Great for improving your social proof.
- A hashtag feed – An awesome way to display user-generated content.
- A shoppable feed – The best social way to sell more across your website.
- Link in bio – The best way to drive traffic from Instagram to your website.
- A combined feed – Create a custom feed and combine multiple sources.
All the options available in this first step are based entirely on your feedback over the past couple of years, so I want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a part of our journey so far.
Improved feed embed options
We’ve also simplified the way to embed your newly created Instagram feeds on your website.
You can now create new pages and posts with your Instagram feed automatically embedded – all at the click of a button.
Auto-scroll for sliders
Your feedback keeps guiding us on our way forward and this was a heavily-requested feature over the past few months.
By popular demand, we’ve added the option for the slider layout to scroll automatically, ensuring that all your Instagram posts are shown in a user-friendly way. Set the duration for each slide to customize it to your liking.
Thinking of any other feature improvements you’d like to see? Get in touch to share your ideas with our team and be part of our future roadmap.
Automated “Link in bio” and “Shoppable” feeds
You can now use links found in your Instagram post captions to automayically promote your products, blog posts, events, podcasts, affiliate links, and much more.
Spotlight automatically detects links in your Instagram captions and redirects website visitors from each post on your site to the relevant link.
This saves you loads of time spent in the Promote tab (now also called “Shop” or “Link in bio”), reducing the effort needed to manually add links to each new Instagram post within Spotlight after it’s published on Instagram.
Combine this with the new one-click page creation option in the “Embed” step and you can have your automated link in bio page set up in less than 2 minutes.
Instagram Captions
To add to that, we’ve now enabled captions to be shown in full when hovering over posts in your Instagram feeds.
The format of the information shown on hover has been adjusted to show as much social proof to your website visitors as possible.
Image Optimization
You asked and we delivered once again. We’ve reduced the size and loading time for embedded feeds while also reducing the general loading time of the Spotlight plugin.
This makes Spotlight one of the fastest Instagram feed solutions for your website.
Accessibility
With Spotlight 1.0 comes new and improved accessibility in your Instagram feeds. We’ve added focus styles throughout and adjusted your feeds for keyboard navigation.
That being said, we may have still missed some accessibility improvements, so if you notice anything that needs addressing or fixing, please contact us and we’ll work on it in the next updates.
📣 New premium pricing
Since launching Spotlight in June 2020, we’ve been focused on creating the most powerful and easy-to-use Instagram solution for WordPress.
Around two years later, we’ve now switched to 3 pricing tiers that better reflect you, our users.
Get access to all the design features in the Essentials tier. This is everything you need to create beautiful custom Instagram feeds that fit perfectly into your website’s design, including all layouts (grid, slider, highlight, and masonry) and customization options.
PRO remains our most popular tier with access to powerful features such as hashtag feeds, tagged post feeds, filtering, moderation, shoppable feeds, link in bio pages, and integrations with tools like Elementor and WooCommerce.
Performance (coming soon)
One way Spotlight has differentiated itself from the competition is by focusing on ways to do more with your website’s Instagram gallery. The “Promote” feature we launched many months ago has gone on to power shoppable Instagram feeds and bio link pages for some great websites.
However, going beyond just the ability to add links to your posts, you’ve asked us about the option to track the performance of your Instagram feeds. Whether it’s the number of clicks on your bio link page or sales from your shoppable feeds, having access to analytics data will help you learn and improve.
Aside from that, we’ve also been asked about more ways to control the quality of the images and videos displayed in your Instagram feeds. We’re now actively working on a media management tool that will allow you to do just that.
We’re actively working on this brand new and innovative Performance tier as you read this. It will be available soon and will include powerful management and tracking tools, as well as some cool new integrations!
How do the new pricing tiers affect existing customers?
If you already own Spotlight PRO, nothing changes. As long as your subscription is kept active, you will continue to pay the same price until the subscription is canceled or it’s left to expire. You will also continue to get access to all new PRO-level features in the future.
There is a downgrade option for those who can make do with the Essentials tier, but given the price difference, it may not be worthwhile for most of you. As for the new Performance tier, this is a brand new plan and we will announce its upgrade options closer to the launch date.
If you’re still using our free version, you can upgrade today starting at just $39.
What’s next?
The updates haven’t stopped there. As I’ve hinted above, we’re busy working on Spotlight 1.1 and our brand new Analytics feature. We’re working on providing you with helpful insights into your Instagram feeds’ performance to help you grow your Instagram, website, and business.
We want to thank you for being part of this amazing journey so far. As always, your feedback is what drives the development of Spotlight so we encourage you to contact us with your comments, ideas and feedback at any time.
