Pinterest today launched The Pinterest Shop, a page that features an assortment of buyable pins and retailer shops selected by the social network’s staffers. Buyable pins let users buy products directly within a pin.
Pinterest on Wednesday will begin showing buyable pins to consumers using Android devices in the United States; buyable pins were previously only viewable on iOS devices. It plans to expand them to desktop computers in the future.
The moves are the latest in a series of steps aimed at remaking Pinterest into an e-commerce destination.
While the social network is coy about sharing sales and engagement metrics related to buyable pins; it only will say that early results show that Buyable Pins “will drive new customers, incremental sales at no cost and higher mobile conversions for merchants.” It also notes that it has 60 million buyable pins on its platform, more than double the 30 million it had in June when it first let consumers buy on Pinterest. That’s thanks in large part to expanding its buyable pins test earlier this month to Bloomingdale’s and Wayfair, as well as retailers that operate on IBM Commerce, Magento and Bigcommerce e-commerce platforms. Merchants that use Shopify Inc. and Demandware Inc.’s platforms already had access to the test.
Pinterest’s buyable pins pitch is simple: They make it easy for a shopper to buy on a smartphone by eliminating the need to click to a retailer’s site or app to complete a purchase.
Buyable pins have a price tag indicating the cost of the item and appear in users’ home feed, category feeds, search results, recommendations, boards and The Pinterest Shop. Users can also search for Buyable Pins and can filter them by price. Once a shopper finds a buyable pin she likes, she can scroll through multiple images, select size and color, click Buy It and pay with a credit card directly within the Pinterest app.
Pinterest is not alone among social networks seeking to transform into online marketplaces. For example, Twitter recently expanded its Buy Now button initiative and YouTube began letting advertisers promote products on any YouTube video in which the video owner opts in. And Facebook Inc. is running multiple tests with Shopify merchants involving Buy buttons.
The initiatives center around the same goal: Figuring out how to boost mobile conversion rates, Michael Yamartino, Pinterest’s head of commerce, recently told Internet Retailer.
“Everyone sees a problem that needs to be solved,” he says. “We think that we have a different perspective because e-commerce naturally fits with our platform.