Have you ever embedded a Pin on your website and thought 'meh, it's just not eye-catching enough - if only it were bigger'. If this sounds like you, then Pinterest has a solution - the visual notice board platform has announced that users will now be able to embed Pins of varying size to their sites, an upgrade from the previous offering, which only enabled you to pin images in one size (237 pixels width).
The Pinterest pixel widget is now available in three size options, with a maximum size of up to 600 pixels in width. This will allow you to showcase your pin images in their full glory and with a big, clickable image, which might sound like nothing much, but those larger images can have a significant impact. How significant, you ask?
From the Pinterest blog:
"...early tests from Huffington Post have shown that these new larger Pin widgets are more click-worthy. After giving the larger Pins a try, their clickthrough rates increased by 8x."
Using the new larger Pin embeds is easy - once you find a Pin you want to embed, head over to the Pinterest Widget Builder and select 'Pin' from the listed options.
Once you're in the Pin window, enter in the URL of the Pin and go to 'Pin size' to see the options available:
Once you've chosen the image size you want, Pinterest will provide you with an embed code at the bottom:
Insert that into the HTML code of your website and there you are, a custom-sized Pin. Alternatively, if you're on Pinterest and you find an image you want to add to your site, you can tap the three-dot icon on the Pin, then select 'Embed'.
Pinterest has made some subtle (in a UX sense), yet significant, advances in 2015. They rolled out 'Buyable Pins' back in June - an important update, particularly considering that 96% of active Pinners use the platform to research and gather information about future purchases. More recently, Pinterest introduced the very cool ability to search for content within a Pin image simply by selecting it.
Pinterest also hit 100 million monthly active users in September, a big jump - some analyst predictions only had the platform reaching half that figure by the end of 2015. Given these figures and advances, it's not hard to see why some see Pinterest as the platform to watch in 2016. If that engagement does continue to grow, and Pinterest continues to enhance the user experience with changes, like improved Pin embeds, it may become more of a focus for brands in the new year. If you've not looked into Pinterest, not considered the possible value of Pins and Pin content for your brand, it may be time to investigate the opportunities of the platform.