Pinterest is all in on shopping, rolling out a slate of new features for merchants yesterday. They include…
- The Pinterest API for shopping, which introduces new catalog management and product metadata features that improves data quality for merchandise. The company said businesses have already seen a 97% accuracy level for price and availability data.
- Product tagging for pins to make them shoppable. Users have 70% more shopping intent on tagged product pins, Pinterest noted.
- Video in catalog, which lets sellers tag all their products inside a video.
- And a shop tab on business profiles, which allows merchants to display shoppable products to browsing pinners, giving them more control over how their brand and items are displayed.
The new offerings make it easier for vendors to load product, promotions, pricing, and inventory levels into Pinterest, Jeremy King, the platform’s SVP of engineering, told Retail Brew.
“When you think about having a catalog come in the mail and every single item is personalized to you, that’s what the Pinterest shopping experience needs to look like,” he said.
Pin ’til you win: From AR to allowing creators to tag shoppable pins, Pinterest has been pushing toward creating a more seamless experience for users and merchants alike. Earlier this year, Pinterest added furniture and home decor to its suite of AR capabilities after beauty and makeup.
- King said consumers who interact with the beauty AR features are 5x more likely to make a purchase.
- Pinterest also acquired AI-powered shopping platform The Yes last month.
“The shop tab, and some of the features that are on the bottom of the inspiration fields now look more like a traditional e-commerce site…so it makes it much easier for [users] to take action when they have been inspired,” King said. “That’s what we’re after, but we’re being super careful not to screw up the inspiration part.”
- Pinterest said 89% of weekly pinners used the platform to inspire a purchase within the last year.
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+1: This all comes on the heels of Bill Ready, previously Google’s president of commerce, taking over as CEO last week. His appointment follows a tough 2021 for Pinterest, when it lost 47 million active users.
“The close proximity of these announcements sends a strong signal that the platform is seriously contemplating a move towards a more direct monetization model, and expanding the overall role it plays in a consumer purchase journey,” Matt Gilbert, CEO of partner marketing software and service provider Partnerize, told Modern Retail.—KM