Solved

Help with Pinterest integration?

wickedbride
Excursionist
30 2 26

Hello - I’ve been having some trouble with the Pinterest app/integration/sales channel. I’ve been in contact with the Pinterest/Shopify support team, but they have been unhelpful. Shopify doesn’t support the app, so they’ve tried the best they can on their end. 

I'm having two issues:

1. Pinterest is pulling in all variants of the products, and as a result, I have 20+ pins for one actual product. Is there any way to prevent this? I’m assuming I can just uncheck all variants except one under “available on Pinterest” maybe? 

2. Pinterest is pulling in images from some listings that I don’t want pulled in. With my products, only the first 1-2 images are of the actual product; the rest are lifestyle images and info graphics (because people don’t always read descriptions). These images are the same across entire product groups, so I now have about 1k pins that are junk. I spent hours deleting them yesterday only for them to be reingested today (ugh). 

Is there anything short of turning the integration off and deleting all the pins that can fix these issues? Appreciate any help! I’m running the Brooklyn theme, if that helps. Thanks! 

Accepted Solution (1)
wickedbride
Excursionist
30 2 26

This is an accepted solution.

Hi - yes I'm using the official Pinterest integration. And as I suspected, the way the integration is set up at the moment won't work for my shop. I don't have separate/unique images for variations, and many of my listing photos are graphics (because the majority of my customers shop on their phones and flip through photos in lieu of reading descriptions). 

I heard back from Pinterest help - and it looks like they are aware of these limitations, and hope to give users more flexibility in the future. I'm going to post my response here, in case there is someone (like me!) who is beating their head against a wall with all the auto-pinning. Hopefully, an updated version will give shop owners flexibility over what is - and isn't - pinned. For now, I'll manually pin shop items.

Response from Pinterest Shopify team: 

I wanted to share some more information about how the Pinterest Shopify app collects and displays your supporting product imagery from Shopify.

Supporting Product Images from Shopify
For products with multiple supporting images (such as side-views, back-views, closeup images, etc.) Pinterest will create a Pin on your Pinterest store tab (https://www.pinterest.com/yourPinterestUsername/_shop/) selecting the 1 (one) image we predict will be best-performing among all supporting images. This prediction is based on Pinterest algorithms and user data.

We've heard your feedback that we don't always automatically chose the best display image for your products! We're working on functionality to make the main images shown on Pinterest merchant-selectable. 

In addition to this, we are working on improvements to be able to show all your supporting product images at once in a single Pin.

Product Variants from Shopify
Product variants represent different versions of the same product. For example, you may sell a t-shirt in small, medium, and large sizes - these are 3 different variants.
On your Pinterest store tab we'll create a Pin for each variant. In our t-shirt example, this means you'll see 3 Product Pins created.

We've heard feedback from multiple merchants that this generates too much clutter on your Pinterest store tab and are we are working on improvements to navigate through variants on a single Pin.

In summary, we're working on the following improvements:

  • For products with multiple images, let you (the merchant) choose what product image is displayed as the main Pin image on Pinterest.
  • For products with multiple images, give shoppers a way to see the rest of the images (besides the main one) directly from one Pin
  • For product with multiple variants, give shoppers a way to navigate through all variants from one Pin
  •  

We currently don't have an estimated release timeline for these improvements but are working hard to release them as soon as possible!

I know this might not offer an immediate solution to your problem, but we believe the in-progress improvements  above should help solve for what you're tying to do. Please let us know if that's not the case or you have any additional feedback to share!

View solution in original post

Replies 20 (20)

wickedbride
Excursionist
30 2 26

UPDATE: I've had to turn off the integration. Turns out, you can't uncheck "available on Pinterest" for separate variations, so that was a bust. Also, last night the ingestion/integration doubled the previous pins. For a shop with 280 items, I now had 3043 pins total. 

Maybe I'm missing the point of this integration - and the intention is just to bomb Pinterest with a million pins of your products? But that feels spammy - so I've turned it off because I haven't received any guidance from the Pinterest/Shopify team, and google is yielding zero results. 

ldz
Excursionist
21 1 4

Hi @wickedbride , are you using the official Pinterest integration? https://apps.shopify.com/pinterest

wickedbride
Excursionist
30 2 26

This is an accepted solution.

Hi - yes I'm using the official Pinterest integration. And as I suspected, the way the integration is set up at the moment won't work for my shop. I don't have separate/unique images for variations, and many of my listing photos are graphics (because the majority of my customers shop on their phones and flip through photos in lieu of reading descriptions). 

I heard back from Pinterest help - and it looks like they are aware of these limitations, and hope to give users more flexibility in the future. I'm going to post my response here, in case there is someone (like me!) who is beating their head against a wall with all the auto-pinning. Hopefully, an updated version will give shop owners flexibility over what is - and isn't - pinned. For now, I'll manually pin shop items.

Response from Pinterest Shopify team: 

I wanted to share some more information about how the Pinterest Shopify app collects and displays your supporting product imagery from Shopify.

Supporting Product Images from Shopify
For products with multiple supporting images (such as side-views, back-views, closeup images, etc.) Pinterest will create a Pin on your Pinterest store tab (https://www.pinterest.com/yourPinterestUsername/_shop/) selecting the 1 (one) image we predict will be best-performing among all supporting images. This prediction is based on Pinterest algorithms and user data.

We've heard your feedback that we don't always automatically chose the best display image for your products! We're working on functionality to make the main images shown on Pinterest merchant-selectable. 

In addition to this, we are working on improvements to be able to show all your supporting product images at once in a single Pin.

Product Variants from Shopify
Product variants represent different versions of the same product. For example, you may sell a t-shirt in small, medium, and large sizes - these are 3 different variants.
On your Pinterest store tab we'll create a Pin for each variant. In our t-shirt example, this means you'll see 3 Product Pins created.

We've heard feedback from multiple merchants that this generates too much clutter on your Pinterest store tab and are we are working on improvements to navigate through variants on a single Pin.

In summary, we're working on the following improvements:

  • For products with multiple images, let you (the merchant) choose what product image is displayed as the main Pin image on Pinterest.
  • For products with multiple images, give shoppers a way to see the rest of the images (besides the main one) directly from one Pin
  • For product with multiple variants, give shoppers a way to navigate through all variants from one Pin
  •  

We currently don't have an estimated release timeline for these improvements but are working hard to release them as soon as possible!

I know this might not offer an immediate solution to your problem, but we believe the in-progress improvements  above should help solve for what you're tying to do. Please let us know if that's not the case or you have any additional feedback to share!

KCole
Tourist
3 0 4

I've been having the same problem with the variants and photos. Thanks for following up and sharing the response you got. Saves me the time with support.

James_Standen
Tourist
3 0 3

I don't know why this problem is ticked as solved. It's not solved. I have the same problem 5 months after the first message in this post. It would be helpful if Shopify could give an update on the problem.

freidadancer
Visitor
2 0 10

This is a very much-needed update. I have multiple shots of my products,  and every one goes up on Pinterest, cluttering the site. I have to go in and delete all the extras.
It would be very helpful to use the 'main' photo in my shop as the Pinterest photo, then interested buyers can click on to see more. 

Please keep us in the loop about the progress on this. 

Kissys
Tourist
5 0 8

Same here, just came here to find the "solution" which isnt in fact a solution.  I don't even really know how to navigate this besides to erase the pins, keep one and just remove the size? I dont know how to resolve this without a lot of time going into it.  Then Im not sure if it will even work because I feel like its going to just keep updating and adding all the sizes anyways?

lara9209
Tourist
8 0 3

While Pinterest has an "algorithm" that tells them which image will work best.  I have actual sales data that tells me that and I still can't update that.  For several of my quilt patterns, it is showing the image that has the fabric requirements on it ... not even the image of the quilt. 

 

It's been over a year since they said "they were working on it".  Are you sure that Pinterest isn't owned by Etsy?  I thought they were the only one who set new programs into place that don't work and then promise fixes that never materialize.

hopps
Tourist
44 0 1

Hi there! Here's an answer to your question: https://app.hopps.io/videos/how-do-i-integrate-pinterest-with-shopify-17865924f05. If it doesn't make sense or you still have questions, one of the experts can walk you through the solution.

Kissys
Tourist
5 0 8

Link doesnt work

Eloise-Bussiere
Visitor
1 0 0

Any updates?

James_Standen
Tourist
3 0 3

Nothing 😞

 

TheShop
Visitor
1 0 0

Having the same problem here, 2011 pins on the Products list and about 70% of the pins are different sizes or size sheet images.

 

Really getting frustrated here because even if I delete the pins I don't need, it goes ahead and restores them!

tuantai0304
Visitor
1 0 2

I had this issue too. 

Pinterest just choose random Image from my products and use it as pin.

There is no way to select the image I want to show.

Lindsey79
Tourist
6 0 3

I would like an update too as you should be able to change the main image on a pin. For example, I sell doormats and it is using the plain back of the doormat as the image rather than the one with the pattern.  Who wants to look at a rubber underside of a doormat?! Can't believe the algorithm would pick the most useless image.  Another example is it I sell tote bags with an image on one side only and again it's showing the plain side 🙄

Hope this gets sorted as otherwise, it would be really good. 

DavidJT
Visitor
2 0 3

Here we are in Mid-July 2021 and no improvement or change on the Pinterest integration app. Therefore, if you have variants, you will end up with multiple pins of your products. 

Shopify/Pinterest are clearly not in a rush to resolve the issue. Despite saying they are "working hard on it".

Thanks to the OP for their efforts.

 

SmashfireKim
Visitor
1 0 1

Does anyone know if this issue was solved? I really don't want to try it again like I did last year and have thousands of useless pins to delete ugh. So crazy that this is actually an issue. Like why, right?

 

Thanks!!!

cigrisan
Visitor
1 0 2

Nothing seems to have changed and it's 2023!  Come on Pinterest, sort this!

tees4daysshop
Visitor
1 0 0

I am still having the same issue with the integration. I'm selling graphic tees. Each combination of image, size, and color are generating a pin. For my 40+ products, I now have about 4000 pins on Pinterest. This is a baffling issue. No help from Shopify. No help from Pinterest. I'm considering removing the integration. But I would still like to post items on Pinterest. Does anyone know if there is a way to manually tag a Shopify product or product variant for Pinterest? Is there anyone out there who has successfully integrated?

mlynek
Visitor
1 0 0

I would also like to hear what the status for you guys atm? Are there any work-arounds? I retried, its the same thing, nothing changed since 2021, I tried to exclude all products from the sales channel, and maintain the connection for ad puposes, but now i saw that pinterest pulls products to secret boards, even if its not allowed to..... Seems the desperately hoping for our add money, as nobody is directly using it anymore. Please let me know your thoughts and solutions.