Pinterest’s Buyable Pins Now Come With Price Tracking

Pinterest’s buyable pins just got even more compelling for retailers.

According to TechCrunch, the social network and digital service rolled out a new feature this week that updates pinners when an item they have saved drops in price.

As the outlet describes the process, when users save pins, they’ll get a heads-up when a price drops in the form of an in-app notification and an email. They can then jump straight to that pin and make the purchase. The new feature will only work on pins that have already had a “buy” button added to them by the original uploader (usually the retailer). The buy button was another new feature that the visual social network rolled out earlier this year to much fanfare from pinners and retailers alike.

TechCrunch spoke with Product Marketing Manager at Pinterest, Sarah Shere, who said the tool was driven by some user behavior the company expected to see in the shopping experience. Pinterest’s developers were able to see that users are often waiting for the price to drop to the right point before finally making a purchase from the network. The company wanted to ensure it could enable this inflection moment as part of the in-app shopping experience it is building out.

“I don’t think it’s a unique psychology to Pinterest, but we tried to build a shopping experience that worked for that customer experience — discovering a product, waiting for the right moment and then completing the purchase in a seamless way,” said Shere. “In this case, one of those right moments is waiting for the price to drop.”

In the short term, this new feature helps make the platform more sticky for users. Long term, the developers at Pinterest may have their sights set on a 360-degree in-app retail experience, as revenues from their buyable pins are building alongside their other advertising products.