Pinterest Launches Powerful New "Now Trending" Tool for Ecommerce Businesses

Pinterest has quickly grown from a place to save recipe and home décor inspiration to a leading ecommerce platform with over 400 million monthly active users. And the social network is not slowing down anytime soon. With the launch of its new Now Trending tool, Pinterest is poised to become an even more powerful sales and marketing channel for online retailers in 2024 and beyond.

In this post, we‘ll take an in-depth look at Pinterest‘s new Now Trending feature – what it is, how it works, and the exciting opportunities it unlocks for ecommerce businesses of all sizes. Plus, get expert tips on how to position your brand to capitalize on this game-changing tool.

What is Pinterest‘s Now Trending Tool?

Pinterest‘s Now Trending tool is an innovative new feature that displays a feed of a brand‘s most popular products directly on their website, based on what‘s currently trending on Pinterest. When a user visits an ecommerce site that has the Now Trending tool enabled, they‘ll see a dedicated section or widget that showcases the retailer‘s products with the most buzz on Pinterest at that moment.

Here‘s an example of what the Now Trending section looks like on launch partner Walmart‘s website:

[Mockup image of Walmart‘s Now Trending Pinterest section]

This dynamic, automated trending product feed is made possible by Pinterest‘s API, which allows approved ecommerce platforms to integrate Pinterest data and functionality into their own sites. The API also powers the ability to filter and sort the trending products feed by category, most repins, most recent, price, and more.

How the Now Trending Tool Works

So what‘s happening behind the scenes to power the Now Trending tool and surface a brand‘s hottest products of the moment? It all comes down to Pinterest engagement data.

Every time one of the 400 million-plus Pinterest users saves a product pin to one of their boards, that‘s valuable data that the Now Trending tool taps into. The tool analyzes the pinning activity around a retailer‘s product catalog in real-time to identify which items are getting the most attention and "buzz" on the platform.

Some of the specific engagement metrics and data points that may influence what products get featured in the Now Trending feed include:

• Total repins/saves of a product pin
• Repin/save velocity (how quickly a pin is being repinned)
• Click-throughs to the retailer‘s site
• "Add to cart" actions on Pinterest
• Recent reviews and rich pins with pricing info

Products with high levels of engagement and interest from pinners will rise to the top of the Now Trending rankings and earn a spot in the coveted feed on the retailer‘s site. This feed is updated dynamically as Pinterest engagement ebbs and flows, with the hottest products of the moment getting priority real estate.

Benefits of the Now Trending Tool for Ecommerce Businesses

The Now Trending tool offers major benefits to ecommerce brands and retailers, including:

1. Increased product visibility and discovery. Having a dedicated space on your website to showcase your most popular products on Pinterest is incredibly valuable for attracting interest and generating sales. It allows you to leverage the buzz happening on Pinterest and bring that engaged audience to your site to discover more of what you offer.

2. Social proof and FOMO. Seeing which of a brand‘s products are most loved by other Pinterest users is a powerful motivator. It serves as compelling social proof while also tapping into people‘s innate fear of missing out on what‘s popular and trending. This can give buyers that extra nudge needed to convert.

3. A more engaging, dynamic site experience. The Now Trending feed makes your ecommerce site feel more alive and in-the-moment by surfacing fresh, trending content from Pinterest automatically. Rather than a static page, visitors get a taste of the real-time activity and buzz happening around your products outside your site.

4. Valuable insights to inform merchandising. Having visibility into which of your products are popping off on Pinterest can help inform your overall marketing and merchandising strategy. You may choose to feature those items more prominently on your site, run a promotion, or order more inventory to keep up with demand.

5. Synergy with your Pinterest Shop. For brands that have invested in creating a Pinterest Shop, the Now Trending tool creates a virtuous cycle and feedback loop. Pinners discover your products in your Shop, those products rise in the Pinterest engagement rankings, which then get featured on your own site via the Now Trending section to attract even more visibility and sales.

Early Examples from Pinterest‘s Partner Sites

Pinterest gave a handful of major retailers early access to the Now Trending tool, including Walmart, Ikea, Sephora and Wayfair. Let‘s take a look at how a couple of these first-movers are putting the tool into action on their sites.

Walmart has combined the Now Trending feed with a "Buy now" button that makes it super easy for shoppers to go from browsing to buying in just a couple taps. It‘s a great way to capitalize on the intent of people coming from Pinterest who have already shown interest in a product by pinning it.

[Screenshot of Walmart‘s Now Trending example]

Wayfair takes a bit of a different approach, using the Now Trending tool to personalize the shopping experience. Beneath the core trending feed, Wayfair displays products "Related to Your Pins" that are personalized based on that specific visitor‘s pinning history. It‘s a clever way to make the integration feel more customized to each shopper.

[Screenshot of Wayfair‘s Now Trending example]

Pinterest‘s Ecommerce Evolution and Strategy

The launch of the Now Trending tool is just the latest step in Pinterest‘s ongoing evolution from a social discovery engine to a powerful ecommerce platform. Over the past few years, Pinterest has rolled out a steady stream of shopping features including Product Pins, catalogs, personalized shopping recommendations, Pinterest Shops, and visual search.

All of these moves ladder up to Pinterest‘s overarching goal of becoming the go-to starting point for shopping inspiration and product discovery. The company‘s mission is to make every pin shoppable, blurring the lines between browsing and buying.

"Our vision for shopping is to make Pinterest the home for taste-driven shopping. We want Pinterest to be the place where you discover and buy products you love," explained Pinterest‘s Chief Revenue Officer Jon Kaplan in a recent interview.

The Now Trending tool fits perfectly into this vision by marrying a brand‘s most popular products on Pinterest with their owned ecommerce channels to create a seamless shopping experience. It brings the product discovery happening on Pinterest full circle by allowing brands to integrate trending Pinterest content back into their websites and other channels.

How to Prepare Your Business for the Now Trending Tool

While the Now Trending tool is currently only available to a limited set of Pinterest partners, the company has stated that it will be rolling out more widely in 2024. That means now is the time for businesses to get their Pinterest presence in shape to make the most of this feature when it becomes available. Here are a few key steps to take:

1. Get the Pinterest pixel installed on your site. To enable the Now Trending integration when it rolls out, you‘ll need to have Pinterest‘s tracking pixel up and running on your ecommerce site. This piece of code allows Pinterest to connect your product catalog with pins and track essential actions like page visits and sales conversions. If you haven‘t installed the pixel yet, that should be your first priority.

2. Focus on building your Pinterest audience. Growing your brand‘s following and community on Pinterest will be key to getting traction with the Now Trending tool. The more people you have pinning and engaging with your products on the platform, the more likely those products will be to surface in the trending widget on your site. Building an engaged Pinterest audience takes time, but some reliable tactics include consistently pinning fresh content, promoting your pins, participating in group boards, and optimizing your profile and product pins for search.

3. Invest in high-quality product photography. The Now Trending section is very visual-driven, pulling in product imagery from your Pinterest pins. To make sure your products look great and stand out in this feed, audit your current Pinterest creative and invest in eye-catching, professional-quality product photography optimized for the platform.

4. Curate Pinterest-exclusive collections. Consider putting together a few product collections exclusively for your Pinterest audience that you can actively promote in the months leading up to getting access to the Now Trending tool. The goal is to get these collections heavily pinned and saved so that the products have a better chance of surfacing in your trending feed on your site once enabled. Exclusive, limited-edition, or seasonal collections tend to perform especially well on Pinterest.

The Future of Pinterest and Ecommerce

With its growing suite of shopping solutions and an audience of over 400 million high-intent users, Pinterest is quickly becoming a critical component of any well-rounded ecommerce strategy. Looking ahead to 2024 and beyond, it‘s clear that Pinterest will only continue to double down on developing new tools and experiences to position itself as a prime destination for product discovery and shopping.

"All of these [ecommerce] experiences add up to an exciting vision of what we can uniquely offer shoppers, retailers and advertisers," said Jeremy King, Pinterest‘s SVP of Engineering in a statement. "Pinterest is the home for inspiration-based shopping and we‘re investing to make this an even better place for brands of all sizes to reach their audiences."

The Now Trending tool is an exciting glimpse into the future of social commerce on Pinterest. By bringing the most popular products based on real-time Pinterest trends to the retailer‘s own sites, it creates a symbiotic relationship that benefits both pinners and brands.

Ecommerce businesses should be actively preparing now to capitalize on these new opportunities by building out their Pinterest presence, installing the necessary tracking tools, and aligning their product and merchandising strategies to what performs well on Pinterest. The future is bright at the intersection of Pinterest and online shopping – and the smartest brands will be positioned there to meet it.

Conclusion

Pinterest‘s Now Trending tool represents an exciting new frontier for ecommerce businesses looking to drive product visibility and sales through the platform. By leveraging Pinterest‘s engagement data to surface a brand‘s most popular products directly on their own website, the tool creates a powerful flywheel effect to attract Pinterest users and convert them into customers.

While access to the Now Trending feature is currently limited to a handful of Pinterest‘s biggest ecommerce partners, the company has signaled that it will be expanding access broadly in 2024. Online retailers that get ahead of the curve by optimizing their Pinterest presence and strategy now will be best positioned to reap the benefits of this new functionality in the months to come.

Pinterest has proven that it‘s serious about becoming a one-stop shop for product discovery and taste-based shopping. For ecommerce brands, that means getting serious about including Pinterest as a key pillar in your overall marketing and sales strategy. Doing so will allow you to not only capitalize on powerful new tools like Now Trending, but to reach Pinterest‘s vast, high-intent audience and unlock fresh opportunities for growth.