Ideal for generating e-commerce sales, Pinterest has gradually become an essential channel for retailers.
Whether you’re a small online store or an e-commerce giant, Pinterest allows you to build or strengthen your brand around a community by uploading photos of your products, helping you increase visibility and sales.
So many good reasons to use Pinterest in e-commerce
With its user interface optimized to showcase products in the best possible way, Pinterest is emerging as the most appropriate social network to influence consumers’ buying decisions.
Based on image sharing, Pinterest is in effect a “catalog of ideas” designed to help users find new products. This notion of discovery gives users the opportunity to act impulsively. Most of the searches on Pinterest are actually done by people who intend to buy.
The figures confirm this. According to a recent Internet trends study, 55% of Pinterest users buy or find products through the social network. This far exceeds its closest competitors Facebook (12%), Instagram (12%) and Twitter (9%). As for Pinterest’s internal 2019 data, it shows that a consumer is twice as likely to buy a product in a store having seen it on Pinterest.
Discover also our 6 tips to create a successful Facebook ads
To make the most of Pinterest’s potential in 2023, your business profile should include the following:
- A logo or product image: if you have a recognizable logo, this is the obvious choice for your Pinterest profile image. Another good idea is to highlight a product – your best seller for example.
- Your business name: If your brand name is not well known, you can add a descriptive phrase, such as “Mike’s Place | We sell tools” or “Sally’s Boutique | Vintage dresses”.
- The URL of your e-commerce.
- A description of your company: to present your offer and reflect your brand identity.
Example of a Pinterest profile: our client Banana Moon
- Your entire product catalog: make sure to add a link to your e-commerce product page to each pin, and don’t forget to give additional information to encourage more clicks.
- Several tables: if you sell kitchen utensils, for example, you can divide your tables into categories such as “pots”, “pans”, “small pots”, “large pots”, etc. But be careful not to get too carried away: it is better to have five or six tables with many products than a hundred tables with just one or two products each.
- Your e-commerce content: in addition to simply sharing products, Pinterest can be a great way to promote your content. The social network allows you to set up a blog board so that users can choose to view your posts. Sharing across multiple channels can give all your social media marketing efforts more momentum.
To continue with this, don’t forget to add a Pinterest button on your e-commerce and product pages to allow users to pin your images to their Pinterest page.
Also check out our article, ” How to turn your Instagram into e-commerce? “
Pinterest’s latest e-commerce features 2021
Shop the look
Originally, Pinterest was just a catalog of ideas. Over time, the social network has opened up to online shopping, launching the “Shop the Look” feature.
In concrete terms, “Shop the Look” offers Internet users the possibility of clicking individually on the elements of a photo in order to buy them or, if they are not on sale, to see the similar items available.
With a few clicks, users can scroll through several product images, select the one they want, and then choose their payment method.
Shop the look on Pinterest
For retailers, “Shop the Look” represents a tremendous opportunity to capture consumers at the level of their emotional engagement with a brand or product. It’s also a boon for those who can’t afford to have their own e-commerce, allowing them to still tap into Pinterest’s huge audience.
Pinterest does not charge fees to merchants and consumers making purchases on its platform. However, in order to get preferential visibility for their pins in users’ feeds, brands will be encouraged to pay for promotional pins.
Lens
Another particularly interesting update for e-commerce is the ” Lens” functionality. In the same vein as the music app Shazam, “Lens” will allow users to search on Pinterest from a photo on their smartphone. With this new feature, the social network connects the virtual world to the real world.
How does it work? In much the same way as Google’s reverse image search, which allows users to browse the web based on images rather than keywords.
Specifically, if you take a picture of your favorite restaurant chair, Pinterest will find that chair or other similar chairs in its image base.
Lens on Pinterest
And the “Lens” feature doesn’t stop there. Indeed, the idea is to go beyond showing similar objects by suggesting related search results to the user.
For example, if you take a photo of tomatoes, Pinterest will not only show you more food photos, but also relevant recipes. In this way, the social network becomes a real gateway to a brand.
Instant Ideas
Pinterest has also launched a third feature: ‘ Instant Ideas’. With this one, the social network is now able to recommend personalized pins to users in their news feed.
Instant Ideas on Pinterest
“Instant Ideas”, is designed to provide inspiration based on objects that users encounter in pin. It is thus possible to browse a new inspiration feed based on a subject to complete one’s selection of images.
You guessed it, in 2021, Pinterest is an essential destination for shoppers looking for inspiration. The advantage of “Shop the Look”, “Lens” and “Instant Ideas” is that the search is no longer transcribed into words! The image takes care of everything.
With these new features, Pinterest is expanding its user experience by suggesting the most relevant pins based on an initial search or navigation. From an e-commerce point of view, Pinterest is thus becoming more and more attractive.