Selling products online? Not on Pinterest? Why on earth not?!
73 million users log into Pinterest every month (more than the entire UK population, which is 'only' 64 million); and it attracts new users all the time thanks to its low spam rate and user-friendly visual environment.
Pinterest is a great tool for ecommerce businesses: 55% of users consider it a place to shop, 96% use the platform to gather product information, 93% use Pinterest to plan purchases and 2 million people save products pins every day.
Find out more about how Pinterest can help you drive sales and customer engagement.
New Pinterest features encourage shopping
Pinterest is actively working to reduce the gap between online and offline shopping, positioning itself at the forefront of consumer product research.
In June 2016, Pinterest released some new features, making Pinterest online purchases easier than ever:
- A new automatic object detection feature allows iOS users to find products within a pin: by tapping the search icon located at the top of the pin, users get more information about any featured products.
- A shopping cart feature allows customers to browse and shop; the Pinterest cart will remind people about abandoned carts and suggest recommended items.
- The Pinterest camera app means users can now take pictures for Pinterest to seek out similar products and send them recommendations (see this explanatory Vine from Mashable).
- In 2015 buyable pins were added to mobile platform, meaning users were able to purchase products directly from Pinterest. This feature is now available on Pinterest's desktop version too. The amount of items to buy on Pinterest has risen from 2 million to 10 million in just one year!
- In 2015 Pinterest also launched a visual search tool; and since then more than 130 million visual searches a month have been made on Pinterest.
These great features are on top of all the existing perks that have made Pinterest one of the most important social network of the last decade.
Pinterest commitment pays off
Getting started on Pinterest is easy, but it pays off to have a robust Pinterest strategy that covers the boards you want to create, your company pins and pin promotion.
Be consistent with your pinning and make sure your account matches up with your brand and its audience.
Pinterest is easy and intuitive to use and as it’s more focused on collecting useful information rather than socialising, you build an engaged audience from scratch on the strength our your boards.
Having said that, don't underestimate the power of following other people's boards.
Pinterest is famous for its mood-boards filled with inspirational content, captions and high quality pictures and illustrations. Try to capture people's emotions with your own beautifully crafted pins - investing in good imagery and inspirational content is a Pinterest must-have.
Pinterest is the garden of Eden for all kinds of niche interests like travel destinations, DIY, how-tos, crafting and recipes. Get focused on good niche content to succeed.
Women are the main users of the platform; but from 2013 and 2014 male users on Pinterest have doubled. Don't dismiss Pinterest on demographic grounds without doing some research first.
The spam rate on Pinterest is quite low, meaning people tend to spend more time on the platform without feeling bored or irritated. Take advantage of this and don't get tempted to start spamming people!
There’s a low threshold for getting started on Pinterest - you can even start from nothing! Pin it buttons are easy to add to personal and company websites.
SEO techniques applied to Pinterest
Pinterest is highly trusted by Google, making it the perfect place to sharpen your SEO skills and find a place in the online sun.
Thanks to its powerful search engine, Pinterest is the perfect place for product discovery.
Pinterest research tools give users accurate and diverse search results based on their specific niche interests and boards.
It’s important to optimise pins and product descriptions through smart keyword research and insertion.
Remember that 70% of a pin’s engagement occurs in the first 2 days, yet the average pin is repinned (shared) 11 times by users and their followers. Don't forget that once your pins are published they can keep accumulating shares, even reaching other social networks.
Follow other people’s boards to broaden your sphere (they can be brands, people and influencers) and focus on the quality of your own boards.
You can use Google Analytics to track how many people reached your website via Pinterest; or you can use Pinterest Analytics to track your traffic and audience inside the platform.
Conclusion
Pinterest is a great place to discover, share and promote products.
Start your ecommerce success story on Pinterest today!
