Shop with your camera: Pinterest launches Shop tab on Lens visual search results
As more retailers come online and bring their products to Pinterest, we’re making it easier for Pinners to shop with their camera. Over the years we’ve greatly improved the results that appear when you snap a photo with Lens camera search, to match related suggestions and products to buy. There are 3x as many visual searches using the Pinterest camera than last year. Today, we’re launching a shop tab right on Lens results. Just click the camera in the search bar, snap or upload a photo, and see a “Shop” tab with a feed of shoppable Pins based on the in-stock products we've identified in that image. Every Product Pin links directly to the checkout page on the retailer's site.
Snap and shop
Have worn-down running shoes and want to purchase a similar style from a different brand? Use Lens to shop in-stock products. You can also upload a screenshot you’ve snapped from another app or an older photo from your camera roll – such as artwork, a rug or pillows — and Lens will tell you what it is and where you can purchase it.
Lens can take images from offline or online and show you similar items for sale, from a range of retailers and price points. It’s harder to browse the aisles of your favorite stores these days, but with Lens, you can browse the online catalogs of retailers to discover new products you’ll love.
Top-shopped Lens finds
Around half of the items snapped through Lens belong to the fashion or home decor category. The top-shopped products with Lens are prints & artwork, shirts & tops, dresses, shoes, jackets, vases, mirrors, rugs, pants and throw pillows.
In the past few months, there have been increasing searches on Pinterest for at-home beauty products such as press on nails (+30%), while searches related to sweatpants have decreased 12% from February to April. Meanwhile, “home office” searches are the highest they’ve ever been, growing 2.7x from February to April. Heading outside, searches for “backyard furniture” spike every spring, but there have been record highs for these searches this May, 3x greater than last year. And, as Pinners make every grocery store trip count during COVID, there have been record highs in searches for “grocery shopping list”, which have doubled this April compared to February.
One of the unique ways to use Pinterest for shopping has been visual search. Whether you want to search a particular object within a larger Pin, or use the camera to find similar products — if you see it, you can shop it. The magic of Lens is it can help you shop even when you don’t have the words for a text search.
While you have your Lens camera open, click “try on” to use augmented reality to test out different shoppable lip colors from the comfort of your home.
As shopping looks a bit different these days, we’re helping retailers of all sizes bring their products to Pinterest and give shoppers the ability to discover something wonderful and unexpected from trusted merchants. To expand offerings to small businesses, we recently launched a partnership with Shopify that makes uploading catalogs to Pinterest easier than ever. We also just announced a new way to shop curated picks from influencers and publishers with shopping spotlights. If you’re a retailer, you can learn more about shopping with Pinterest here.
You can find high-resolution images here.
Pinterest Internal Data, Global, May 2020
Methodology: Trends are calculated by comparing normalized searches in February ‘20-April ‘20
