To me, one of the best stats illustrating both the growth and the commercial impact of Pinterest is this one: In the Summer of 2011, Pinterest accounted for 1% of e-commerce referrals, in the Summer of 2012 26%.

Since then, a range of different studies have appeared trumpeting the supposed impact Pinterest has on web traffic and ultimately sales.

Most recently, Pinterest marketing platform Pinfluence (via Venture Beat) claimed that while Facebook is good for brand awareness and community building, Pinterest is what really brings people to your site.

The evidence? 50 brands ran campaigns on Pinfluence, and boosted “follower acquisition” by 156% and (re) pins per day by 125%.

Pinfluence clearly isn’t a disinterested party and there is other evidence that points to high bounce rates from Pinterest to websites.

Back in April for example, Copyblogger ran a piece around an experiment where they found a bounce rate of 90%+ to one of their sites. In other words, almost everyone clicked in, and clicked out again.

The Copyblogger article, which is worth reading, makes the point that the problem doesn’t seem to be Pinterest per se, rather its where pins direct people. For example, Copyblogger makes a number of specific observations including:

1 - Infographics and smaller images work well because you can’t see the full image on the pin

2 - Compelling infographic headlines are key

3 - Compelling subjects, where you need to read the full copy on the referring website, will increase traffic

In other words, its obvious. Instead of radomingly leaving visitors on your home page or a product page your content strategy needs to include some kind of path that draws visitors in, gives them some kind of compelling content that makes them stay for longer than 10 seconds, and finally gives them (if that’s your aim) a route to buy.

Posted with Blogsy

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