If you thought that Facebook or Instagram helps/ or plays major role to increase ecommerce website traffic, then you are probably wrong. It’s Pinterest that generates more Traffic & Sales for online websites. Interestingly, 87% of Social Media Users claim Pinterest to be the reason for buying something. According to another study, an average Pinterest user spends $180 compared to a measly $85 spend on Facebook, which makes Pinterest a great tool to push up your sales. If you are looking to leverage this medium for your ecommerce store, here’s how to do it.

Gain Ecommerce Sales on Pinterest Incorporate Pinterest with your website

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Complete integration of Pinterest with your website is the first step to make the most of this platform for your ecommerce store. With this step, you will facilitate better visitor engagement with your website and products on Pinterest as they would be able to easily follow you and repin your posts. This will extend the reach of your posts, thus bringing more traffic your way, a sizable part of which would get converted into sales.

For Pinterest integration with your website, you should do the following:

· Add a Pinterest follow button: It would help your users to follow you quickly and easily with a single click. All you need to do is visit Pinterest’s Goodies page, click on Make a board widget and then choose the Follow button from the Widget building and set up the right Pinterest user name and URL for your account. The next step involves clicking build it and copy/paste the code into your page where you want the button to get displayed.

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· Add a Pin it button: This button on your website will let visitors pin your product images easily, thus driving significant traffic your way. If you have a Shopify Online store, simply visit Shopify’s App Store to get ShopConnection (a free app) for setting up this button.

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· Add Rich pins: Rich data pins let you show additional information (product pricing, number of items in stock, a link to the purchase page etc) about your products on Pinterest. Such pins also get your product listed on Pinterest’s two shopping focused feed — products and gifts, thus increasing your chances of getting sales. You need to check developer’s guide by Pinterest to know how to add rich pins.

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· Add buyable pins: Let users buy your products without leaving Pinterest with blue colored pins that show the items can be purchased.

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Shopify + Pinterest = Leads to More Sales

Small to medium sized businesses with Shopify ecommerce stores can use Pinterest to sell their products to the millions of users active on this online platform. Since Pinterest works with all aspects of your online ecommerce store, all products from the store that you pin on your Pinterest account would become buyable pins. Thus, you won’t need to create the links yourself or wonder if your sales figure is getting affected by Pinterest as all these would be taken care of.

Create specific boards

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Plan your boards around different themes and stories that display different products and attract buyers with varying interests. Classifying boards with themes like Holidays and Special occasions (like Christmas, Valentine’s Day etc), product categories (wedding dress, formal wear, fashion wear etc), contests, deals and discounts, complementary products etc could be good ways of doing it. You could even pin stuff related to your business or the ones that would entice your followers and potential customers.

Add Social Buttons

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You can give more authenticity to your testimonials by creating a customer review board where you gather all your customer reviews and pin pictures of happy customers. You can even ask your present customers to leave their reviews here by giving them something in exchange like a discount voucher to be used on their next purchase.

Grow your Pinterest Followers

Add a Pinterest follow button to your site and interlink your Pinterest account with your other social networking accounts (Facebook, Twitter etc) to make more people interested in your offerings and become your followers. Adding a profile widget is another useful step as it displays up to 30 of your most recent pins, thus driving engagement and increasing your followers. Commenting on popular pins, finding interesting images and sharing them by repining are other steps that can help increase your Pinterest followers.

Why you should use Pinterest for Business

· Pinterest convert into leads: On Pinterest, you can see a product, like it and buy it. Yes, it’s that easy. Since this platform decrease the steps between product discovery and conversion, it helps convert leads into sales faster than other social media sites. Thus, Pinterest triggers a reduced sales cycle, which is a boon for businesses — big and small.

· Pinterest Drives lots of Traffic: To increase your leads and sales, you need to generate more traffic. With Pinterest, you can do that more effectively than Facebook or Twitter. Some studies have even shown Pinterest to drive more referral traffic than Google+, making it the go-to solution for businesses looking to bring more traffic to their sites.

· Pins lead to more Inbound Links: Every pin on Pinterest includes a link that leads back to the image source. When you consider real engagement, inbound links created through images are some of the best links you can get. Though such links are nofollow, they will nevertheless act as valuable inbound links, bringing traffic your way.

· User Engagement Is Very High: Unlike passive users on other social networking sites, Pinterest users are very active. They have a keen interest in what’s trending and love to share interesting stuff with fellow users. This is the ideal behavior that influencer marketers want to tap into. You too can create visually appealing pins that are seen, talked about and shared, thus driving a high user engagement.

· Pinterest Easily Integrates with Your Website and Social Sites: Whether you want to place a ‘Pin It’ button on your website or blog, connect Pinterest with your Facebook Profile page to automatically post new pins to your Facebook news feed to let others see them, or integrate it with your Twitter account, you can do it all. Thus, with Pinterest, you can ensure your social media accounts are all connected and leveraging the platforms to the best.

· Discover What Your Audience Wants: From products that people love to use and talk about to fashion trends, Pinterest is a great platform to discover what sells. You can even follow your followers to find what they share with others to understand what appeals to them and position your own products and offers accordingly.

Sum UpWhether you are in the process of getting your ecommerce store or already have ecommerce store, you can leverage Pinterest by pinning interesting and appealing stuff to bring traffic that drive your sales force. Be ready to put in the hard work though as it isn’t rocket science. Yet, if you give your visitors and followers what they are looking for, they will lap it up and give your Shopify ecommerce store the sales boost you have always dreamt of.

Ethan Brown is a Shopify Website Designer at Milk Bottle Labs, Ireland. Brown has a passion for helping people in all aspects to sell their goods online with a beautiful mobile friendly Shopify store. He provides E-Commerce fulfilment with the complete process, right from the point of sales, inquiry to delivery of a product to the customer. Follow us at Twitter