Pinterest is a great tool to help you plan outfits, or pick out decorations for your dream home. Many of us could (and probably do) spend hours on the site exploring the latest clothing, accessories, and home good trends. But Pinterest just made a change that will take you from admiring to buying faster than ever before.
Today, Pinterest introduced “Shopping with Pinterest,” an update that will let you shop for all sorts of items, not just across Pinterest, but also on the web and in brick-and-mortar stores.
One major part of the update is a new "shopping bag for the internet,” as Pinterest calls it. Now you'll have a shopping bag that keeps track of the products you want to buy, and stays with you across all your platforms (whether you're browsing on your phone, tablet, or the web). There are also new merchant profiles, so you can browse products from your favorite retailers and see what's popular or on sale.
Perhaps the most exciting and helpful parts of the update, though, are the automatic object detection and camera search features. Have you ever been on Pinterest and come across a Pin that included a dress or a lamp that you just had to have, but you had no idea who made it? Trying to find it online could potentially take hours, and you’re not guaranteed to ever track it down. With automatic object detection, all you have to do is tap the visual search icon in the top right corner of any Pin to explore similar-looking products (Pinterest first introduced this back in November).
As for the camera search, this feature, which will be available in coming months, works like this: You snap a photo of a real-world object in order to then find it — and similar products — on Pinterest. Love your friend's lavender throw pillow? Take a picture, then search for it and find it yourself.
The Pinterest peeps are tackling shopping in a big way — and it's pretty smart of them to be doing so. Research from Millward Brown found that 93% of Pinners have used Pinterest to plan future purchases, and 87% of Pinners have actually made purchases because of the site. Those are pretty staggering statistics, and chances are those numbers will keep growing with these new shopping features.