HOW TO SET UP RICH PINS AND MAKE YOUR PINTEREST PINS SHOPPABLE
HOW TO CREATE SHOPPABLE PRODUCT PINS
Did you know that if you have an ecommerce store on your website and/or if you use affiliate product links, you can use Pinterest’s shoppable PRODUCT PIN functionality to drive increased sales? YES!
This post will take you through all you need to know about RICH PINS + HOW TO SET UP SHOPPABLE PRODUCT PINS, whether you have an ecommerces shop on your site and/or you use affiliate product links.
Ready to dive in? Grab your coffee or tea!
ABOUT RICH PINS, IN GENERAL.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO APPLY FOR RICH PINS, EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE ECOMMERCE?
Every image on your site can be a rich pin, whether or not you have an ecommerce store.
It is important to have RICH PINS enabled for your site because having RICH PIN functionality allows consumers who are on your site to pin any image from your site or blog to their own Pinterest boards.
Consumers pinning to their boards ( and other consumers repinning from those boards to their own) then see the extra information about your image that RICH PINS allow for and RICH PIN images also stand out better in the feed, due to the BOLD title.
To get your site verified for RICH PINS, you must first have a BUSINESS Pinterest account. You can switch your personal account to a business account with no loss of followers, and you can also switch it back at any time.
Having a business account also allows you to promote top performing pins and it allows you to see your INSIGHTS, data that is crucial to analyze for continued sales success. Consumers will tell you what they like, simply through what they are repinning. Pay attention to that metric for increased sales.
HOW TO APPLY FOR RICH PINS
PINTEREST’S RICH PIN VALIDATOR LOOKS LIKE THIS
Okay, so now that you have your website set up for RICH PINS, in general, let’s talk about…
HOW TO CREATE SHOPPABLE PRODUCT PINS
First know: if your site has an ecommerce store, and you have RICH PRODUCT PIN functionality set up on your website, (per the above) consumers who are visiting your site can PIN those products to their own Pinterest boards and shop them, now or later.
But, what if you want to create a shoppable pin with a beautiful, contextual image, an image that’s not on your website?
EASY! See the wonderful visual example below…and remember… you don’t have to have ecommerce on your website to create shoppable PINS, you can create them using affiliate links (but not affiliate links from Amazon or Etsy: that is against TOS ).
Note: the images below are from another blog post, linked to at the end of this post. )
First, these images show you how to create a shoppable pin from an ecomm store…but notice where it also says OR AFFILIATE LINK.
Not sure what an affiliate product link is? It’s a link to a product where, if someone buys from your link, you make a commission. The commission is generally in the range of 3-10%, depending on the merchant. Affiliate links take maintenance, and you need traffic to make them work for you, but that’s where PROMOTED PINS on Pinterest can be very useful!
Keep reading, I link to my post on how to set up affiliate links farther down.
So, here’s how you set up a shoppable pin if you have an ecomm store on your website:
Ok, so after the tagging has been completed, your PIN will show up with these white dots on the PIN, (those dots can be re-arranged) and any consumer who sees your PIN and likes what’s there can save it and/or click to shop it from your website or from your affiliate link right away!
And you can create as many shoppable product pins this way as you want.
Two cautionary notes, though:
1. You don’t want to spam out the people who follow you with shoppable pins all the time, so use these judiciously.
2. If you are going to be using affiliate links, check your INSIGHTS regularly for your top performing SHOPPABLE pins, to make sure the underlying affiliate link is still working properly and that the product is still available.
NOT SURE HOW TO SET UP AFFILIATE PRODUCT LINKS IF YOU DON’T HAVE ECOMMERCE ON YOUR SITE?
See this post I wrote about how to use VIGLINK, now SOVRN, for affiliate links.
Please note that REWARD STYLE is the top affiliate program, not VIGLINK, but REWARD STYLE is difficult to get into. It takes a beautiful blog and site + decent traffic to your site to be accepted onto REWARD STYLE, but if you can get accepted, go for that program.
PINTEREST WORKS…OVER TIME….TO DRIVE SALES… BUT THERE IS AN ISSUE.
It has often been noticed by many people really starting to use Pinterest for the first time that Pinterest traffic is really bouncy …meaning that the people who come to your website from Pinterest don’t stay long.
And that can be very true. BUT… what’s really happening on Pinterest is that it is what’s known as a TOP OF FUNNEL visual search tool.
Meaning… consumers are often using Pinterest to dream, to get ideas of the styles they love, the products they love, for their future homes. And what they are doing is SAVING your PRODUCT PINS to their boards for that time when they are ready to purchase..and when they are.. they will be coming back to your site from those saved PINS.
And while they may not buy what they saved, if you have other products on your site for them to buy at that time, they will.
There is not an ecommerce merchant I know of or a design blogger I know of, who uses Pinterest well, whose #1 source of organic consumer traffic, after Google, isn’t Pinterest.
Pinterest works to drive CONSUMER traffic to your site, and it works to drive your sales at the same time. A one/two punch that very few other platforms can match, if any.
In addition, at least still in January 2020, Google is giving an SEO boost to those sites whose pins are frequently being saved. It’s one of the many signals that Google’s algorithm takes into consideration when delivering the most relevant results to those using Google for search.
I hope this post has been helpful to you and….
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS POST, AND THINK IT WILL HELP OTHERS, PLEASE PIN THE IMAGE BELOW.
Thank you for reading and sharing, I appreciate it! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments and I’d love to know if this post helps you move your sales powerfully forward!
Leslie Carothers
Chief Energizing Officer
www.savourpartnership.com
PS: if you are an interior designer reading this post, I invite you to Request To Join my private Facebook community for top level professional interior designers, http://facebook.com/groups/designwealth and I invite all of you who may be reading this to follow me on Instagram .
The blog post where the images came from for the shoppable pins is here.
