Pinterest, the widely used US web and mobile application company have announced that they are set to launch the ‘buy button’. This will simplify the buying process by enabling users to buy things that they see on the screen immediately by just one click of a button. This concept is called ‘buy-able pins’.
Users will be able to scroll through a list of buy-able items depending on their search criteria and then purchase items by entering either their credit card information or using Apple Pay. Don’t worry though, your four-year old won’t be able to suddenly grab hold of your iPad and start buying a large amount of expensive gadgets. Each purchase will require the user to enter a security code. It’s going to be this simple:
Security comes first
This feature was designed with security as the top priority. Wendy Lu, an iOS engineer at Pinterest backed this up by stating, ‘Having a beautiful and speedy app is great, but we also need to make sure it’s secure. We’ve decided that the fewer people that have access to your credit card info, the better. That includes us.’
This new feature will potentially revolutionise the commercial revenues of Pinterest. Not just for the company but its private sellers as well. There is a fairly large group of independent sellers creating innovative, interesting products that you might not find elsewhere on the internet. Indeed, one of the biggest selling points for Pinterest was how easy it is to set up a shop through their website.
Innovative for independent business
By bypassing the normal internet business start-up costs you leave yourself with more capital than you would, say if you created an internet shop with its own website. There are a huge variety of weird and wonderful items for sale on Pinterest. You really can buy anything from kitchenware to a hand carved guitar modeled on the infamous Xenomorph from the Alien franchise!
Mobile explosion
One of the main motivating factors in Pinterest launching ‘buy-able pins’ was the sudden rise in the amount of their users that browsed their website using a mobile device. According to co-founder Ben Silberman, “80% of their users that buy things through Pinterest do so by using a mobile device”. Silberman went on to simply state “People want to buy things”. The latter has always been true and forms part of the real question here – ‘Why has this taken so long?’
One reason is that Pinterest identified itself as more of a community website, not e-commerce. However, these two have really merged together over the past few years. If you take into account how Facebook and Instagram have utilised mobile payments there is no reason why Pinterest shouldn’t have been taking advantage of this huge market.
Being compatible with mobile devices isn’t a luxury option anymore. This is one of the reasons that we advise all of our clients to have a website that is 100% mobile-friendly. More and more people are doing their browsing and shopping from their palms. It is essential that any modern business prepares for the present.