Pinterest gets its own shopping pages

Everything on Pinterest should be shoppable: with that in mind, the platform is adding shopping pages, where retailers and brands can inspire customers and encourage them to shop at the same time.

Buy button becomes shop page

Pinterest is looking for the best way in which to evolve from a social media network to a shopping platform: after the failed introduction of buy buttons, the company is now rolling out shop pages. On these, users can see extensive product catalogues of various retailers and brands. They can also place items in their shopping baskets there, but they are taken to the brand’s website when it is time to pay.

The former buttons proved to be too difficult to integrate on a technical level, and they were also considered too distant by brands: the retailers lost control and they lost their relationship with their customer, since the transaction was carried out entirely through Pinterest, AdAge writes. 

Within the new shop section, the platform wants to respond to these complaints by focusing on automated image recognition and artificial intelligence. Pinterest is asking retailers and brands that have a company page to upload their entire product catalogues in a specific way onto the platform, so that products are automatically recognised and referred to the shop department in every photo in which they appear.

New advertising opportunities

The bulletin board site also introduces a new advertising format, ‘shop the look’, in which several sponsored products are included in one photo. Previously, no sponsorship was possible for these types of posts. In addition, Pinterest wants to ensure that the websites of brands and retailers are linked to the Pinterest profile of customers, so that they can immediately see a personalised page based on their preferences on the social media platform. 

“Our goal here is to make all of Pinterest shoppable, and make every pin, and the products inside of a pin, make those all shoppable.” says John Kaplan, head of partnerships, about the innovations. He is currently working with Ikea, Target and Home Depot, among others, on the inventory of their catalogues, in order to prepare them for sale.