Written by: Stanley Suen
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media networks. I recall when I first discovered Pinterest in around 2010 (not sure if I recall the time correctly), there were so many Chinese ecommerce sites revamp their look and feel to look alike Pinterest.
A few years since then, Pinterest has received much success in attracting traffic. The highly product and image oriented design makes Pinterest one of the best digital media to drive product focus referral. And data from BI Intelligence shows much a lot of traffic from Pinterest in 2014. BI provided sample data from Etsy:
BI Intelligence Report Traffic Source from Social Media
When it comes to which social networks drive the most shoppers to e-commerce sites, Facebook is the clear leader; the social networking giant drove 67% of all socially referred e-commerce traffic last year, according to SimiliarWeb. However, when we look at where Etsy’s traffic comes from, we see that Pinterest is also a major referrer.
Pinterest drove 31% of socially referred traffic to Etsy in 2014, but only 7.5% of socially referred traffic to all e-commerce sites collectively, according to SimiliarWeb. Meanwhile, Facebook drove 35% of socially referred traffic to Etsy last year.
This suggests that Etsy sellers should have a presence on Pinterest, and marketers and agencies that work with Etsy sellers should be advising them to allocate ad spending for Pinterest. This is particularly true of sellers who deal with products in the beauty, home and garden, and food and drink categories, as those are the most-shared types of products on Pinterest, according to a separate study conducted by ShareThis.
My personal experience may not align with the data which the media site I operate in Hong Kong receive much more traffic from Facebook. Anyway, I believe that there are many variables from business to business as to which social media is best for them. Pinterest is definitely one of the top social media network. If your content contains very attractive images, Pinterest is for sure one of your to be focused area.