Pinterest has proven to be a great new way for people who ordinarily did little online shopping to indulge in a little retail therapy right from home. Many people who have joined the popular photo-sharing website have found themselves purchasing items they have seen “pinned” on Pinterest. Members can view a wide variety of “pins” , from great finds on clothing, kitchen tools, and just about anything else. Many of the people finding themselves spending more on online shopping these days tend to be young , well educated females with disposable income at hand.
Retailers Trying To Target Pinterest Users
Pinterest currently has over 25 million members and boasts the claim of being the fastest standalone website to have reached 10 million unique visitors each month. As you can imagine, retailers are hungry to reach this target audience of young females who have money to spend on online retail therapy. Because Pinterest has bulletin boards featuring many other topics besides items for sale, retailers are finding this somewhat difficult due to the fact that Pinterest is an ad-free website. Pins are known to flourish with little control over those that become viral. While retailers have learned to reach potential customers through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, they are still searching for the best way to use Pinterest as a way to increase their sales.
Add A Pinterest Button
Several retailers have decided to install Pinterest buttons on their main website pages, or have taken it a step farther by creating their own Pinterest pages. Retailers have used some of their own marketing budget in an effort to gain followers on Pinterest. Although Pinterest does not track metrics internally, several supporting businesses have stepped up to assist companies in targeting the revenue driving aspects of the Pinterest website.
[Read also: 5 Reasons Why Pinterest is Becoming the Best Social Media Marketing Tool]
Pinterest Generates More Spending
One chief executive of a company that provides analysis of Pinterest usage compares it to a large window shopping venue that assists people in finding interests and items that really appeal to them. She also feels that Pinterest encourages people to be a little bit impulsive in their shopping habits. Ecommerce experts have determined that the Pinterest website has been more successful than some other social media sites in generating more dollars per user, although Facebook is still the leader and remains the largest social network to date.
On average, a shopper on Pinterest will spend close to $170 per session, as opposed to Facebook shoppers spending $95 per session, and Twitter users spending only $75 per session. This was based upon a study by e-commerce consultants, RichRelevance. With Pinterest being only three years old, it is valued at $2.5 billion US dollars.
Popular Retailers Getting In On Pinterest
Many popular retailers such as Nordstrom, L.L. Bean , Urban Outfitters, Gap, and Lululemon Athletica now have a presence on Pinterest. Since there is no advertising on the site, companies have done such things as feature interest-based images or promotions to acquire new followers. Company sponsored contests and sweepstakes have been shown to attract new users. It is estimated that the cost to a company to gain a Pinterest follower ranges from about one cent to fifty cents.
Since Pinterest does not use direct advertising, retailers have found more subtle ways to capture the interest of online users. By getting their products and services out there, and by people liking them and “pinning” them, it draws more traffic to the retailer’s site, increasing the chance of more sales.
[Recommended read: What Are The Common Things That People Buy Online]
Hey Peter,
I thought pinterest is simply for promoting our blog and drives traffic to our blog but Thanks to you for telling me that we can use pinterest for online shopping also.
We cannot use Pinterest to shop it’s not an online shopping website it’s a social media. However, most users tend to share pictures of goods, or retailers could take advantage of the photo sharing site to share photos of their respective products, hence “helping” the retail industry.
great article peter
pinterest has shown huge growth and it is growing rapidly, it is a great social network and websites having good images can do wonders with it. so yes there are chances that retailers will be going to take huge benefits from it. thanks for the article
It goes to show how effective pictures are. The old saying of ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ really proved to be very true!
hello peter pinterest is growing very rapidly and it is also good for retailers to take benefits from it.
also use it to promote your blog.
thanks 🙂
Yeah I use Pinterest to promote my blog all the time. Seems like retailers are finding it pretty useful too these days!
I’m a fan of Pinterest. Not only is it helpful to retailers, but it is also very simple to use.
Yeah I agree, and most people tend to get attracted easily with pictures making Pinterest a great social media to promote their products.
Hello lee, this is a very good article and you said it very right that all retailers should leverage the power pinterest specially those who are into fashion, garments, baby products, jewellery, household and gadget industry. Pinterest is more popular to women than men and this is truly very simple to use so the retailers should encash on that. Thanks lee thanks for pinting out these valuable points.
People tend to get attracted to images easily. There’s a reason why they say a picture speaks a thousand words. 😉