While Facebook has made an incredible mark on all of our lives, it’s time for it to bow down gracefully to another site that’s romancing online users: Pinterest. Sure, it’s fun to bop around Facebook and look around on business’ sites, see what their specials are, and what products they’re selling, but with Pinterest, online shopping has gotten ten times easier- and more fun! Scour pages upon pages of pictures of visually pleasing products, click on them, and it will take you directly to a site where you can purchase them. Sounds cool, right? Let’s take a deeper look at why online shoppers prefer Pinterest over Facebook. Sorry Mr. Zuckerberg.
- Visually Pleasing: With Pinterest, shoppers are more allured by the pictures of products than anything else. On Pinterest’s home page, users see countless “pins,” or pictures, of items. These items range from products for the home, jewelry, apparel, meal ideas, vacation spots, do-it-yourself ideas, books, music, fitness- you name it. Users can then collect all of the items (or pins or pictures, whichever you prefer to call them) onto their own personal virtual pin board. Think of it as an online wish list of all of the items you love in one place. The thing about Pinterest is that only pictures and videos are allowed to be posted, so retailers make sure that their pictures are super tantalizing to look at. With Facebook, pretty much anything goes, anyone can post whatever they want, and sometimes there are less than appealing photos (and posts) cluttering pages.
- Simplicity: So you click on a picture that you like on Pinterest. Let’s say it’s a picture of a cute summery pair of Toms Shoes. Voila! You’re automatically transported to the Toms website where you can purchase the exact pair you clicked on. Saw a do-it-yourself tutorial on how to make your own Maxi dress? Click on the picture and the steps will appear before you. Or maybe you’re just looking for a really good summer read. Browse through the book section and see what others have to say. Pinterest really caters to the customers as far as ease of finding items that users are looking for. With Facebook, a business may offer a page showing their specials or asking you to “Like” their products, but you can’t always purchase directly from their Facebook page as there isn’t a hosted shopping cart. Andrew Kardon, president of online shopping site JoeShopping.com has said, “Facebook, it seems, does a great job of collecting fans, but not doing much with them. Facebook users like to share items and comment. They like to either praise or criticize a store, using their Facebook page as a customer service of sorts.”
- Organized Search: Rather than typing in each individual business page on Facebook, Pinterest has categories organized at the top of their page. Like we said in #1, the categories are almost endless. Choose from Architecture, Art, Cars & Motorcycles, Design, DIY & Crafts, Education, Film, Music, and Books, Fitness, Food & Drink, Gardening, Geek, Hair & Beauty, History, Holidays. Home Décor, Humor, Kids, My Life, Women’s Apparel, Men’s Apparel, Outdoors, People, Pets, Photography, Print & Posters, Products, Science & Nature, Sports, Technology, Travel & Places, Wedding & Events, and Other. Once you click a category, you’re taken to a page showing all of the items within that specific category. Organizational freaks everywhere are rejoicing- and for good reason. Pinterest is here to stay!
Kristy Kravitsky reads, writes, shops and explores from her home state of Pennsylvania.
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