Stats of the Week: Pinterest's expanding ecommerce efforts

Pinterest added several ecommerce features this past week. Here are six figures highlighting its increasing prowess as an advertising platform.

Pinterest, once seen as “where you go if you like cupcakes,” has become quite a force in ecommerce between its promoted Pins and improved targeting capabilities.

According to Mary Meeker’s annual trends report from last month, 55 percent of people on Pinterest use the platform for shopping. On other social networks, that number is only 12 percent.

Perhaps that’s because Pinterest isn’t as inherently “social” as other social media platforms. While you use Facebook to connect with your friends, most people actually use Pinterest to engage with brands. Which home remodeling project sounds better: the one your friend is talking about or the one Lowe’s is talking about?

Earlier this week, Pinterest positioned itself as the platform that may be the biggest competition to Amazon. Like the ecommerce juggernaut, Pinterest now has a shopping cart on both its website and its mobile apps.

Pinterest is also improving its visual search capabilities, showing users similar items to those featured in a post, and allowing them to search for products with the pictures they take IRL. In addition, the platform is bringing its Buyable Pins beyond the app and extending them to the website.

With those enhancements in mind, we decided to dedicate this week’s stats round-up to Pinterest and its expanding ecommerce efforts.

30

There are million of products to see on Pinterest from more than 20,000 merchants. How do people find the ones they want to buy? The largest group – 30 percent – who makes Pinterest purchases does so via search. The platform’s homepage and Related Pins each account for 25 percent; 20 percent, The Pinterest Shop and boards.

33.3333333333

According Pinterest’s the initial tests with its new commerce products, one-third of purchases were initially found on mobile. That number seems a little low, when you consider that more than 80 percent of the platform’s traffic comes via mobile.

5

Oracle found that if someone sees a Pin, they’re twice as likely to buy it in-store. If that Pin is promoted, the customer is five times more likely to buy it IRL.

93

Millward Brown, the market research division of WPP and a new Pinterest partner, found that 93 percent of Pinners use the platform to plan purchases. Nearly as many (87 percent) have made purchases after coming across a Pin for a product they liked.

130 million

It makes sense that Pinterest is improving on its visual search. Each month, people do 130 million of them.

8

This isn’t a new stat, but it’s a good one: 8 p.m. is the best time to pin, if you want clicks or repins, according to 2014 data. Repins are also more likely at 3 p.m., while clicks extend all the way through 10 p.m.