Last week Pinterest announced they would be rolling out “rich pins” which the goal is to make it easier for the Pinterest users (Pinner) to buy/make/watch products/recipes/movies.
I personally think this works really nice for big box retailers, but this “enhancement” will be tough on independents because of their lack of know-how or resources to get rich pins from their site (or if you don’t have a website, you miss out completely).
You can get your own rich pins for the products you sell, but it does take some tech work and you must have a website. You can learn more here.
With this “enhancement” you’ll notice price banners are no longer displayed across the top left of a product pin. The price will still display in the description and I suggest you list this on products your pinning that you sell, but the price banner is gone.
From the Rich Pin Getting Started page, I personally can tell you it will be challenging for some independents to use this and again, is limited to those who have a website. I’m disappointed in this new feature as it will tremendously help big boxes but the small guys won’t necessarily get to play.
From the Pinterest blog on how to get Rich Pins:
Right now, there are three types of rich pins: movie, recipe and product. To get started, you’ll need to prep your website with meta tags, test out your rich pins and apply to get them on Pinterest. If you’re not technical, you might want to ask your developer or site owner to help get you going! Here’s the link to Get Started Using Rich Pins.
I’ve heard of this but haven’t gotten started, but there are a number of free website start companies or lower cost ones (as opposed to ones where you both buy hosting and your domain) so I believe there is plenty of potential for indie retailers if they’re on that track.