How Pinterest Supports Small Businesses During the Holiday Season

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, online businesses are reaping the benefits from shoppers who prefer to browse through online stores rather than physical storefronts. If your company features its products on Pinterest Shop, you are probably especially happy with your decision to join that marketplace, which has been especially created for small businesses. The rollout of Pinterest Shop was timed this year to be made available just before Small Business Saturday, which occurred on November 30. During Small Business Saturday, people all around the country are urged to support their local businesses while the holiday shopping season is ongoing. In making the Pinterest Shop available to all its users, Pinterest has allowed users to browse through hundreds of products which may include a number of their favorite pins. Seventeen favored brands are already featured on the curated pages of the Shop, and users have access to all these.

The Pinterest Shop

Your first impression on visiting the Pinterest Shop would be that it looks just like any other Pinterest user profile, except that created boards have been replaced by profiles of different merchants. All pins which are contained within the boards are shoppable products which users can purchase.This new platform has been described as Pinterest's vehicle for capturing shoppers' attention, and using digital pin boards to collect images of specific products they might possibly be interested in purchasing.At present, the collection of merchants featured in Pinterest Shop consists of hand-selected vendors which were considered ideal for the initial offering.Pinterest will undoubtedly be adding more merchants to Pinterest Shop in the future, focusing primarily on crafty small businesses which are extremely creative or innovative, and which have a very positive mission.

Applying to be part of Pinterest Shop

Virtually any small business which has products to offer to Pinterest users, can apply to become part of the Pinterest Shop initiative. All that's necessary is that you contact Pinterest and fill out a form describing how Pinterest has helped you to enhance your business or to achieve significant growth. Any company from any location around the world is eligible, and any product lines will be considered.Those which are considered to be of particular interest to Pinterest users, may be featured in blogs, emails, or Stories, so that other small businesses can benefit by learning about your success story. This is something that is probably well worth doing for your small business, because you will achieve tremendous visibility, and it will definitely expand your reach to include a vast new audience. It might even be the one trigger which causes your business to soar to the heights of business success.

What you'll see

When you visit the Pinterest Shop, you will see a whole array of small business companies laid out on each page. You'll also see several images of products which are offered by each of those companies, as well as the total number of pins which are shoppable for that particular company. When you click on any of those small businesses, you will be taken to a page that shows all of their pins being offered, so that you can have the opportunity to purchase any of their products.One of the great things about Pinterest Shop is that you'll have a number of these companies on your screen, side-by-side, so you can personally choose whichever one of them you care to patronize. If some of your purchases turn out really well with a given company, you can return to Pinterest Shop to buy more of their products. On the other hand, when things don't work out so well, you can simply move on to another small business to check out what their product offerings are.

Makeup of Pinterest Shop

As of December 1, 2019, Pinterest Shop consists of 17 different small businesses, all of which have been hand-curated by Pinterest, and which cumulatively feature hundreds of different pins which are shoppable. These unique businesses were chosen because they have product offerings which are not available at many other online stores, or in large physical storefronts for that matter.This will give shoppers a unique opportunity to purchase that one gift which their family members or friends simply don't have, but might take a genuine interest in receiving. The particular small businesses featured on Pinterest Shop were chosen for their unique missions, and for the background stories of their creators from all around the country.

In some cases, the small business was founded by college friends who simply wanted to offer something different to the public, and in some cases a husband-and-wife team is trying to make a go of it.In any case, there are a number of worthwhile company stories behind all these featured small businesses on Pinterest Shop, and you might be as intrigued by the business itself as the products they're offering for sale.

Shopping on Pinterest

As most Pinterest users are aware, it's very easy to purchase products directly from retailers on Pinterest by using product pins. Any pin that you see which has a shopping tag in the corner, will have current pricing and availability information when you click on it. Apart from using Pinterest Shop, you can also find purchasable items when you're browsing through your home feed, or when you conduct searches for specific items on the platform.If you care to shop for something which is related to some of the ideas you've already saved up, you'll be able to go to any of your boards, and look under the More Ideas tab. Here you'll find ideas on home decor, do-it-yourself projects, health, beauty, or lifestyles, and all of these can be the basis for shopping searches on Pinterest.To do this from your home feed, all you have to do is click onto the search bar and enter any product name. Then you should probably choose All Pins, so that none of the product pins are filtered out. Then all you have to do is select Product Pins, and there will be a display of all those products which match what you entered on the search bar.