Pinterest Debuts API for Shopping; Product Tagging for Pins

In the wake of an 87% increase in the number of merchant catalogs on its platform, Pinterest is rolling out a number of features to provide a better shopping experience.

“Over 400 million Pinners come to the platform every month to discover new products and shop for brands that inspire them,” the company said in its announcement Thursday (July 7). “With the new merchant features, Pinterest is making it easier for merchants to create engaging shopping experiences for the millions of Pinners on the platform.”

Read more: Pinterest Makes Itself More Shoppable

Last year, the number of Pinterest users who engaged with “shopping surfaces” on the platform increased by 215%, said Jeremy King, the company’s senior vice president of engineering.

The new shopping features, which include API for Shopping, let brands and retailers reach “high-intent Pinners during the earliest stage of their shopping journey with the most updated catalog data,” he added.

The company says it is boosting its investment in shopping and measurement features, such as catalog and product metadata management, to allow for more efficient, improved data quality for products. The API has lead to a 97% accuracy level for price and availability data.

See also: Pinterest to Acquire Online Fashion Retailer THE YES

Another new feature is product tagging on Pins, which “allows merchants to make their lifestyle Pins shoppable and helps Pinners move easily from inspiration to action,” the company said.

This feature lets merchants add products from their catalog to their scene images. From there, users can shop for the items they want from these images. Pinterest says initial tests found that “Pinners showed 70% higher shopping intent on product Pins tagged in scene/brand images than standalone product Pins.”

Earlier this year, Pinterest said it was placing commerce at the core of its growth plans, a move that followed the launch of the API and a partnership with WooCommerce.

And in June, the platform announced the acquisition of THE YES, an online fashion shopping marketplace that is home to hundreds of brands.

“The team at THE YES has built an extensive fashion taxonomy that uses human expertise and machine learning to power a comprehensive algorithm in fashion,” Pinterest said. “THE YES’s brand relationships and shopping expertise can potentially be applied to other categories on Pinterest such as home, beauty and food.”