In the last few months, Pinterest has received an overwhelming change in their user base. Females still stand as the dominating gender with approximately 71% coverage according to a research conducted in December 2014.
Reference: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/pi_2015-01-09_social-media-demos_04/
However, according to a latest research, the rise in the male users of Pinterest has shown drastic improvements and stands at an amazing 73% rise.
What is the change?
Since the time of initiation, Pinterest has been more focused on gender neutral topics such as wedding, food, home décor and more. Also another important aspect that draws attention is the fact that most content available on the site seems to be targeted towards a female audience.
To make sure that they do not lose out on their male user base, Pinterest has introduced a brand new option which allows users to generate results according to their gender.
This means, based on the profile of the user, any search results would show content which is specific to the gender of the user. This new feature has been named “guided search” which aims at providing more relevant content, allowing capturing the male audience.
How is it different from the old interface?
Isn’t it annoying when you are precisely looking for male shoes and the website throws a search result which is filled with female stuff? To make sure that the male population does not get dissatisfied with their searches; Pinterest will now show results which are more gender centric.
For example the search results for shoes by a male will only provide images and pins which have male shoes in it and those for females will show only shoes for girls. This feature makes sure that the audience which comes to your page stays and browses more which in turn also helps pushing sales.
Image showing search results by a girl and a boy respectively for “shoes”
How will this impact Marketers or Users?
So, why exactly are they improving their user interface? This is a huge opportunity for Pinterest to not just increase their visibility but also increase their revenue generation.
It is interesting to note that Pinterest has been active and popular in the field of advertising from a long time now. It has consistently focused on its strategy of generating revenue by selling advertisements, i.e. “promoted pins”, which shows up on a user’s pins of other products or images. This in turn attracts attention of other users and encourages online shopping.
With this interesting feature added to their search option, marketers are also going to show higher interests. Increased visibility also means uproar in people’s interest towards the same.
Considering the fact that there are a number of impulse buyers and deliberate buyers in the online space, it is a huge space for the online sellers. Satisfactory search results for men will increase the chances of getting higher promoted pins, instigating many to shop more.