Once upon time the social networking site known as Pinterest was a visual pin-board platform. Nowadays the social networking service has grown to a visual discovery tool including a force to be reckoned within the world of social commerce.
A recent infographic published Sept. 8th, 2014 on Visual.ly-the community platform for infographics and data visualization-details important metrics behind the exponential growth along with reasons for the popularity of the social network.
According to the visual graphic, Pinterest has seeing huge spikes in online traffic. Women drove 85 percent of the traffic on the website and 68 percent of Pinterest users are women. The online traffic includes 4.9 million visitors in November, 11.7 million visitors in January and 17.8 million visitors in February. One of the most powerful aspects of it continues to be referral traffic to retail websites.
There are three aspects that can explain as to why Pinterest is liked by so many users:
- Easy to use
- No clutter with excessive text and many webpages
- Well-organized information
What do women Pin or share on the website? Six categories come to mind when you join the platform. They are the following: crafting, decorating ideas, book list, fashion, travel and cooking. Even though the social network has sort of a following structure the rules of engagement are not about having lots followers. It is about sharing the very content that engages the interest of the users, which is quite different than Twitter or Facebook.
User satisfaction for social media including Pinterest
Naturally as social media has become a prevalent way of communications it has become a customer service channel for various industries especially retail. Customers who use these social networking marketing channels have contacted brands or companies via these alternative mediums. As a result companies have gradually allocated part of their staff to handle customer requests and put in place a social media policy for this medium.
Where does user satisfaction or customer service rank for social media? Compared to 2013, the social media score improved overall 4.4 percent. However on a scale of 100 points social media scored just 71 points. Still ranking below the United States Post Office, hospitals, cell phone and other industries.
The websites that are liked best and naturally Pinterest came out on top with a score of 76 surpassing Wikipedia (74). Not surprisingly Pinterest had higher user satisfaction by the likes of YouTube (73), Google+ (71), Twitter (69), LinkedIn (67), and Facebook (67).
Finally, it is safe to say Pinterest out of all of the platforms offers simplicity in use, not so many webpages and not so many privacy settings. It has conceived a different approach within the social media industry and it has not run into too many privacy hiccups by the likes of a well-known service like Facebook.
If creating a website seems far too intimidating, too time consuming, or even too technical Pinterest offers a simple setup to get up and running. It is one of the most visited websites and retailers are turning their attention to the platform because of the potential in social commerce. Take time to study the ins and outs, but learn to interact and exchange with other users. This formula tends to pay off for those who follow the Pinterest etiquette.