Buyable Pins, the new feature announced by Pinterest last month, started rolling out across iPhones and iPads yesterday, with Android and web versions to follow. Like Facebook Lead Ads, currently in testing with a small group of businesses, buyable Pins seem designed to take the hassle out of mobile shopping. Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom are among the brands partnering with Pinterest on the launch.
Recently on The Hub, Irv Shapiro of DialogTech explained that mobile shoppers were reverting to click-and-call in large numbers because of the inconvenience of making purchases on small screens. With buyable Pins, Pinterest users will be able to make purchases with three clicks, whenever they see a blue “buy it” button. After clicking on the button, the user is asked to select iPay or a pre-registered credit card as payment method, and is then taken to an order summary screen with a “place order” button.
Buyable Pins can be discovered not only on home feeds, but via search and recommendations. With the entire shopping experience taking place within the Pinterest app, it will be easy to capture data on the journey to purchase, although the Pinterest announcement did not indicate whether the data would be used for targeted marketing purposes. Since Pinterest, initially at least, is not charging retailers a fee to upload buyable Pins, data sales would be a possible route to monetizing the feature.
