The Impact of Pinterest on Modern Web Designs

Pinterest is just all the rage these days. In the beginning of 2012, the site reached its ten million unique visitor mark – faster than any website ever! Pinterest is a great place to find just about everything. From shoes and accessories to laptops and scanners, you’ll find thousands of ideas on various Pinterest boards. For the uninitiated, Pinterest is one of the newest and hottest networking sites which offers a fresh take on how people utilize social media. In essence, the site is like this virtual scrapbook where users can find pictures they like on the Internet and sharing it with their networks by “pinning it”.

The Unique Pinterest Design

If you haven’t visited this famous bookmarking site yet, you may recognize Pinterest’s design elements that have been popping out everywhere since its mainstream debut in 2011. Pinterest doesn’t use the traditional web building platforms. Pinterest gives you the feeling of window shopping, putting content in small boxes that users can organize into pin-boards. Most of the block is filled by an image, with Like, Comment, or Repin buttons at the bottom to make it appear like a mini webpage. Though this Palo Alto startup is staying mum on its number of users, a recent study found that it brings more traffic to sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined.

Pinterest and Web Design

The popularity of Pinterest only means that several aspects of the Internet are turning visual. Although content is still superior for search engine ranks, images are now becoming more relevant in this trend. Here are a few ways on how Pinterest is slowly changing web design and development.

• Content organization is changing. People are now depending on content categorization and presentation more than ever. By grouping content and images the way Pinterest does, you are allowing visitors to browse a huge amount of database quickly and efficiently.
• Images offer better exposure. With Pinterest emerging as a social media giant, it is now easier for your company site to be seen through photos. For instance, if you are a retailer for computers or all in one printers and somebody pins your product on their interest board, your product will be seen by that person’s followers as well.

Much like the “Retweet” button and the “Like” button, Pinterest is making it simple to like something on website. It is also easier to figure out what other people like by viewing their pin boards. From a web designer’s view, is Pinterest really better designed than other sites? Perhaps this is the wrong question to ask. A better question would be—why are sites rushing to imitate Pinterest? Well the answer is simple. People can process and “pin” images quickly and get easily tired of text. Images are just easier to digest than words. Whether Pinterest will emerge as the future’s greatest platform is anybody’s guess. But its photo-centric web design has truly inspired many websites these days.

Pinterest and Consumer Brands

Although Pinterest wasn’t created with the retail industry in mind, Pinterest has proven itself to be of great value to the American retail industry thus far. A large percentage of retail stores, brands, and chains have now created their own pin boards and are using this image-driven community to drive more traffic to their websites and increase their bottom line. Although commercial interest boards can raise a few eyebrows from time to time, in general the quality control of Pinterest is top notch and so far the social networking site is not being overly abused by businesses. Let’s just hope in the future it stays that way, however.

About Jakk: Jakk Ogden is a professional self-employed blogger and the founder / owner of Technology Blogged. 22, with a love for good writing, you'll find me playing 'Drag Racing' on my HTC One X and rocking a pair of Grado headphones. If you love technology, be sure to subscribe to my feed for unique editorials. Find me on Google+. View author profile.