Is Pinterest The New Social Network For Shopping?

As society becomes increasingly digital-first, Pinterest has seen a substantial uptick in users. Whether it’s re-furnishing a room, making gifts for friends, or trying to support small businesses, the opportunity for retailers to get their products in front of consumers has significantly increased.

New Pinterest Shop Functionality

Pinterest quickly responded to this need by adding a new ‘Shop’ tab on their platform. Pinterest users can now shop in-stock inventory from pins, on pinboards, and in search results. 

Pinterest Shopping Options

Users have multiple options when it comes to shopping on Pinterest. 

Pinterest Shop Tab on Brand Pages

Users can visit their favorite fashion brands, click on the Shop tab and scroll through a list of featured items. It’s like someone curated a shopping list to match their pins and interests.

Pinterest Shopping Search Bar

On the other hand, users can now use Pinterest’s shopping tab via the search bar to scroll through generic term searches, i.e., “coffee table” or “jean baggy shorts,” which allows smaller companies the chance to be discovered. 97% of top searches on Pinterest being unbranded, this generic search allowance presents an even more significant opportunity for small brands to make a name for themselves. However, Pinterest also added two filters that allow users to filter through generic searches by brands and pricing, which could hurt a smaller brands’ ability to be discovered by a user. They could potentially use these filters to filter through only name brands. An important thing to note is that Pinterest shopping is currently only available for fashion and home decor. 

Pinterest Shopping Visual Search

Pinterest has also begun to upgrade its visual search option to choose to shop via uploading an image or taking a picking of the product. Pinterest will attempt to provide only pins with the product or a similar product featured. 

With all of these new additions, Pinterest has started to define itself as the social network for shopping, but only time will tell if users find these new additions helpful.

Shopify Integration

Soon after Pinterest announced their ‘Shop’ tab, they launched a new app with Shopify that allows Shopify merchants to plug in their Shopify inventory directly to Pinterest. This launch opened Shopify’s millions of merchants to a new way of selling. The app provides a quick way to upload catalogs and turn their products into shoppable pins. Please note that you must have a Pinterest business account to sell via the ‘Shop’ tab.

What’s Included in the Shopify Pinterest Sales Channel (App)?

The Pinterest and Shopify app allows Shopify merchants to access distribution across Pinterest with or without ads. Merchants also receive reporting and results to maximize reach across the platform. With features like tag installation, catalog ingestion, ads buying interface, and automatic daily updating of products, Pinterest does most of the work for you.  The app makes setting up just as easy as it automatically creates a connection between the individual store and Pinterest.

Once the app is installed, Merchants can deploy a tag on their website and publish in-stock product pins. As an additional way to be discovered, merchants also have a ‘Shop’ tab directly on their profile for users who are explicitly searching their store and are interested in purchasing their products. With this new launch, Pinterest has created new outlets for brands to be discovered and purchased.

With the substantial increase in e-commerce adoption in 2020, we firmly believe Pinterest shopping is a great outlet to sell through. If the above information wasn’t enough to get you started, below are several statistics of why Pinterest users should not be ignored as shoppers. 

So Why Pinterest Shopping?

• The number of users engaging on Pinterest is up 44% from 2019
• Over 80% of Pinterest users have purchased something shown in pins from brands.
• Pinners are 3x more likely to visit a retailer’s site after discovering them on Pinterest than other socials.
• On average, Pinners spend 1.6x more than people who don’t use Pinterest.
• Pinners are also 1.25x more likely to buy multiple items than people who don’t use Pinterest. 

As market trends begin to shift even more online than ever before due to unforeseeable circumstances, Pinterest has done a great job staying ahead of or at least consistent with their customer’s needs. By partnering with Shopify, Pinterest has created a whole new realm of shopping. While shopping and social media were once separate, more and more users find themselves looking for an easier way to accomplish all tasks in one. 

Click here to get started on setting up Pinterest Shopping for your Shopify store!