PINTEREST AND SHOPIFY UPDATE
Pinterest has pulled their sales channel on Shopify today WITH NO WARNING to Shopify!!!
This means, there are NO MORE Buyable Pins! All Buyable Pins have been converted to Product Pins (which are pretty much what we have with our Etsy shop items).
People on Pinterest can still click a product pin, see the price and product description, but the additional photos are gone, the in-stock/out-of-stock notice is gone, and the Add to Bag option on Pinterest is gone.
Shopify was floored by this, and are asking Pinterest why there was no warning. Pinterest basically contacted Shopify and told them they needed to remove the Pinterest Sales Channel today. Wow.
What Does This Mean For You?
- We CAN still get orders via Pinterest, BUT it will be when customers click a pin and click through to our websites (just like with Etsy).
- The Pinterest Sales Channel will no longer work in your Shopify Dashboard.
- It is hard to tell how Product Pins will perform for us at this point. This MIGHT be a good change for us, I'm just not sure yet since it is just now being rolled out.
It sounds like Pinterest will be adding THEIR OWN Shopping Platform to Pinterest (so they can take a percent of sales), but I don't know details of that yet.
I did find this article - https://www.adweek.com/digital/pinterest-is-converting-its-older-buyable-pins-to-product-pins/
And this article - https://newsroom.pinterest.com/en/post/new-ways-to-shop-with-pinterest-0
Shopify told me that merchants will receive an email notification about this change tomorrow.
Just wanted to share this with everyone.
"If it isn't working the way you're doing it, do it a different way."
(originally posted on 10/17/18 on Slack)
jaydee [1 month ago]
What I am not sure about at this point is IF our newly listed items on Shopify will automatically roll over to our hidden board on Pinterest or not. I am guessing it won't, since there is no connection to Pinterest anymore in our Dashboards. This will mean, we will have to pin all our products manually (like we did with Etsy).
I checked and my hidden products board is still on Pinterest, but I am guessing nothing new will automatically be added to that board.
"If it isn't working the way you're doing it, do it a different way."
aemporium [1 month ago]
Oh! This is sad! Pinterest was going to be my biggest push on SM.
2aemporium [1 month ago]
I wonder if the Communities things on Pinterest is trying to compete with Groups on FB. Pinterest has either been rolling out new ways to pin lately or you @jaydee have been finding more ways to pin/highlight your pins. But even FB lets you check out through Shopify so it makes you wonder how this will shake out.
"If it isn't working the way you're doing it, do it a different way."
(originally posted on 10/17/18 on Slack)
jaydee [1 month ago]
To be clear, the Buyable Pins we had on Pinterest are now converted into Product Pins. While Pinterest doesn't have the Add to Bag feature any more (just like Facebook doesn't have check out on Facebook anymore), people can still purchase our pins through Pinterest. They just click on the Product Pin and it brings them to our product pages, where they can then add to their cart.
I DO think Pinterest Communities are trying to be like Facebook Groups. I've been exploring the Pinterest Communities and they really are much like a Facebook Group, but with way less features. For me - I will stick with Facebook Groups for the things I am working on (I have a vintage Facebook Group and then one for TheDrawingBoard).
The two things I notice right away with this Pinterest change are:
- We will more than likely have to pin all our products MANUALLY to Pinterest (versus the product feed that we had with the connection between Pinterest and Shopify).
- Our Product Pins don't show additional photos (like Buyable Pins did), AND when a user clicks on one of our pins, they will now see More Items Like This at the bottom of the pin (much like what we see on Etsy).
I think using Shop the Look with Pinterest will help us as we move forward.
This is all new, obviously, so I am still working on a strategy I will use, but I'm trying to learn more about ways we can use the Product Pins to our advantage.
"If it isn't working the way you're doing it, do it a different way."
(originally posted on 10/17/18 on Slack)
jaydee [1 month ago]
@Bungalow222 - your hidden Pinterest Product board is still there. Here's a link https://www.pinterest.com/bungalow222vintage/_products/
I have not yet been able to determine if newly added items to our Shopify stores are still automatically added to the hidden board - I am guessing they won't be. I need to add some new listings to check this out.
"If it isn't working the way you're doing it, do it a different way."