Pinterest personalizes online window shopping tools

Pinterest wants to be your personal shopper. On Monday, March 4, the platform rolled out several updates for buyable Pins, including personalized recommendations. The update also allows users to shop items only from a specific brand, while brands can now upload their entire catalog.

Users can now find ideas similar to the Product Pins they have already saved with a new shopping recommendation tool. When viewing a shoppable Pin, users can find the feature by tapping on “more ideas.” The tool collects in-stock products related to your past Pins to create a more personalized experience. From the recommendations, users can tap to shop the online store or to save the Pin to a board.

Pinterest shoppers can also soon narrow their search down based on a single brand. Underneath a product Pin, an upcoming option that says “more from [brand name]” will take users to a page of Pins exclusively from the brand on the original Pin.

Pinterest users may soon also start noticing more product Pins on the platform — that is because brands can now upload entire catalogs, turning each item into a separate Pin. Business owners will have access to a new dashboard to organize all those new Pins.

The list of updates also includes an expansion of the platform’s shopping ads, now available through all businesses inside the Ads Manager tool. The ad type promotes specific product Pins.

Pinterest says the updates will bring more buyable Pins to the platform, including pins inside search results. “These updates help retailers get in front of customers who are looking for related products, and Pinners to see items that match their unique style and taste,” Pinterest wrote in a blog post.

Pinterest’s artificially intelligent tools to find similar items can be a popular tool for users shopping on the platform, such as browsing for similar items at a lower price. Mixed with the ability to save items you like, Pinterest shopping just makes sense for some users.

The latest updates join other recent shopping-focused features for Pinterest. Last year, Pinterest converted Buyable Pins to Product Pins to add features, such as indicating whether or not the item is in stock. Last year also saw the shopping ads that are now rolling out to all businesses spreading from a small group to hundreds of businesses.