Why Pinterest is important ?

 It will explore various technical issues involved in starting up and running an e-commerce site.

Social networks are all over the internet, but why pay close attention to a small social networking website like Pinterest?

Pinterest has proven its ability to attract referrals to eCommerce websites. According to Shareaholic’s report earlier this year, Pinterest attracts more referrals to your website more than YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn all together.

So, if you own an e-commerce website, you should pay attention. Pinterest users have grown from 1.68 million to 7.2 million users in fourth quarter of 2011 and it’s been able to build a solid social shopping base.

To get an idea on the number of referrals Pinterest can bring, have a look at the following graph, which shows that the number of referrals coming from Pinterest is double the number of referrals coming from Yahoo and Bing combined.

But what is the difference between Pinterest and other product pages on Facebook and Twitter when it comes to attracting referrals from social shoppers? The answer is simple: Pinterest is more targeted towards social shoppers, whereas Facebook and Twitter are more general.

From Pinterest’s homepage, there is a minimum of two clicks needed for you to reach the online store where the pin you are interested in originated. For e-commerce merchants, this means that a visitor who has been referred to your online store from Pinterest is highly targeted and qualified from the onset, and therefore, more likely to convert to a sale. It’s extremely unlikely that a Pinterest user will end up on your site from accidental clicks.

So how should you establish your brand on Pinterest?

Pinterest provides you with powerful platform for building your brand. This doesn’t come by merely creating an account on Pinterest; you have to genuinely engage on the platform. This will show your followers that you’re not just using Pinterest only to promote your online store; you’re promoting a lifestyle. This method of operation will enable you to gain more followers and build trust.

It’s also critical to ensure that your site has good pictures and videos of your products, as Pinterest pins can only include picture and videos. If the content you wanted to pin is Flash or other rich media, Pinterest won’t be able to find it. You’ll want to test your product pages to make sure images are found when users attempt to pin your products.

Using Google Analytics to Track Pins

If you want to study the traffic coming from Pinterest, you can use Google Analytics. Pinterest assigns each pin a unique URL in the form of "http://pinterest.com/pin/x" where “x” is a random number string, which enables Google Analytics to keep track of each pin individually. This is great for keeping track of popular items being shared and conversions that may result from the pin. You will also be able to see referral traffic from "http://pinterest.com/username/board", although individual pins will be the ones referring the most traffic.