Today, we are going to cover Pinterest catalogs for merchants. If you are a merchant, you have a web store on WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Etsy, or Shopify, and you can upload a catalog to Pinterest, this is definitely going to help you out.

If you have ever attempted to upload your product catalogs to Pinterest and you’re wondering why your pins aren’t driving conversions, or why your product imagery looks grainy… this post is for you.

We’re going to talk about some common issues people run across when importing catalogs to Pinterest. We’re going to talk about why this process is important, mistakes to avoid, and how you can make the most of it with best practices.

What are product feeds or Pinterest catalogs for merchants?

Product feeds or Pinterest catalogs for merchants are essentially just data from your web store fed over to Pinterest that makes your products shoppable on Pinterest.

As you are seeing Pinterest pins that are product focused, they will have calls to actions that say “visit site” instead of ones that say “read it”. Those are more along the lines of a blog post link for Pinterest. 

To create shoppable pins, you can first start by creating a catalog ingestion feed. You can do this on various different storefronts with different tools. You can do it manually or upload a CSV file that’s designed a specific way. Or you can use third-party apps like what is on this list here below. 

You can pay for those services to create a data source for you that will then ingest and talk between your store and Pinterest.

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Third-party tools to setup catalog feeds

Now, those are obviously third-party tools, but there are other apps. Depending on where your shop is housed, you may already have access to an app that syncs with Pinterest.

• Shopify
• WooCommerce

These two are the most common shop platforms that have apps you can also use that bridge the gap because they have integrations with Pinterest. They will definitely help you to create Pinterest pins out of your products without you being involved, which is superb.

They will create product pins out of the product photos that you upload to your listings. If you upload six different images to your listings, it’s going to pull all six of those images in. Make sure you are utilizing the image section on your listings.

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Other ways to create product pins

There are other different ways that you can create product pins as well if you don’t use the previous platforms. You can simply create and upload pins to Pinterest and link them to your product listing URLs.

You can also tag products in Pinterest pins. That will also create a version of the catalog pin. It looks like the catalog pin, but they’re not created by an ingested catalog tool.

Who benefits from using Pinterest catalogs?

A Pinterest catalog benefits pretty much anyone with a storefront that has the capability to create their own catalog.

Benefits from Pinterest catalogs:

• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• Big Commerce
• Private website store
• Wholesaler (depends)

You really need to be able to own the store in order to benefit from this. So, this is Shopify store owners, anyone with WooCommerce, BigCommerce, etc. or your own custom website store.

If you are a boutique seller and you have a local shop in a little town, but you also sell online, then you can benefit from this.

If you are a digital product seller and you have a digital product store like what I have on Shopify, or with WooCommerce, then you can definitely benefit from this.

So whether you are a content creator who also sells digital products or you are strictly e-commerce like direct to consumer product selling then you can definitely benefit from this.

If you do have the ability to set up a wholesale marketplace where people can come to you and place orders and before those orders are shipped, then you verify the wholesale status of the buyer, then this might benefit you.

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Who doesn’t benefit from using Pinterest catalogs for merchants

Doesn’t benefit from Pinterest catalogs for merchants:

• Etsy
• Redbubble
• Zazzle
• Brick-and-mortar store only
• Wholesaler (when using passwords)

If you are an Etsy store owner, you have Redbubble, Zazzle, a third-party marketplace but you don’t actually own the store, then you are not going to benefit from today’s video or from this method.

If you’re an old-school wholesaler that has a private marketplace behind a password, then this will not benefit you. 

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Why uploading your merchant catalog matters

Number one, it matters because you are going to show up in a whole new feed on Pinterest. And with that, you have the ability to be surfaced and showcased in other areas of the Pinterest search results, related feeds, in their browse and their featured sections.

When you upload your catalog to Pinterest, that information is fed through the catalog tool of your choice. This informs Pinterest that these are product pins, which then places your pins in the product search result feed.

Catalog feed example

For example, if I were searching for something like wedding invitations, I would go to the search bar on Pinterest and search that. I can use the filters right below the search bar and filter into products. Then I can actually just view the products that are for sale related to the thing that I’m searching for.

If I’m shopping for wedding invites, I can just shop and browse in wedding invites. This is really powerful because this puts you in a whole new feed that pinners can filter themselves down into and see your products within their pain point or their desire.

Additional feeds for catalog pins

You’re also going to show up in all of the other feeds and surfaces that Pinterest offers.

The home feed: If they have been engaging with anything related to your product, or engaging with any of your other pins (or even your competitors), their home feed will show product pins.

Anytime they search for something and then click on a related pin underneath, those pins that come up alongside yours will also feature product pins that might come from your catalog.

New board feeds: There are also other suggestion algorithms inside of boards these days. Inside of optimized boards, there might be some other related pins to more things.

Google search results: This is a bonus. This is completely off platform, but from time to time, I have seen Pinterest products come up in Google search feeds as well.

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Pinterest verified merchant status

Another benefit to ingesting your catalog with Pinterest is the fact that you can unlock the Verified Merchant Status as long as you meet all of the merchant guidelines.

In essence, they want to make sure:

• that you are meeting all of their terms
• that you’re a real store
• that you are not selling things that they don’t allow
• that you’re not a reseller, etc.

Make sure you tick all of those boxes. And if you do meet all of those guidelines, you have the ability to open up the verified merchant status, which gives you a blue check mark. I have a blue check mark on my profile, as you can see here. 

This is basically like a trust signal to pinners on Pinterest that I have been vetted, that they can trust that I have a legitimate store, and I’m selling legitimate products.

I have also seen verified merchant status products surfacing higher in feeds because it is a trusted source. There’s no confirmation from Pinterest that this is always the case, but I’ve seen it myself on accounts.

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Scaling your Pinterest catalog with automation

Another benefit to uploading your catalog to Pinterest is scaling with automation that does not involve you. This is especially relevant if you’re using Pinterest ads.

The automation makes sure that anytime you update your product on your integrated store, all of that is fed through automatically through that integration tool.

• whether you’re changing photos
• you’re updating the description
• adjusting the stock quantity
• you’ve changed your price

As long as you’re not uploading manually, you can scale easier with some automation here. As your store grows, you add more products, creating these product pins, and surfacing these products in different searches without you needing to be manually involved.

Four common problems with Pinterest catalogs

Let’s quickly run through the problems that I see often with Pinterest catalogs for merchants. I have four main problems that I see so you can avoid them.

• Unhealthy tags
• Incomplete data
• Grainy photos
• Poor product SEO

1. Fixing unhealthy product tags

Number one problem is that you may get an alert that your product tag is unhealthy. Your tag needs to be healthy in order to apply for verified merchant status and be a solid, successful merchant on Pinterest. 

Something that I would suggest doing here is if you don’t have Shopify, and you’re getting these errors, is to use the Pinterest tag helper to see exactly what these problems are. Oftentimes to fix, it’s just a matter of:

• letting Pinterest collect enough information over time
• disconnecting and reconnecting the app. 

I know those help a lot with Shopify stores. If it goes beyond what you are capable of doing, maybe check with the product feed developer to see if they can help you.

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2. Optimizing all your catalog data

Number two is having incomplete catalog data. If you are missing any of your catalog fields, this can harm the health and the success of your catalog on Pinterest.

Make sure that you are filling in all of those little details. I’m going to discuss this further down below with more specifics. 

3. Fixing low quality photos

Number three is grainy photos. Make sure you are using high-quality photography and videos on your shop listings. This is going to ensure when those images are compressed by your store and then fed out through the catalog servers to Pinterest, that you are getting the highest quality possible.

If they are grainy, they do run the risk of getting rejected and it could harm your verified merchant status as well. Keep them as PNG files instead of JPG.

4. Optimizing your product SEO

Number four is poor product SEO. A lot of store owners just simply don’t know why their products aren’t coming up in the search. Oftentimes this ties back to the fact that they are not naming their products what people are using in the search bar. No keyword research has been done. 

It’s not going to be something that you name it in your store. It’s not going to be brand phrases that are known to you. Make sure you reserve those for the descriptions, or maybe after the main part of the title, because new people do not know you that way. They know you by the product that they are purchasing.

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Pinterest catalog health and data fields

I’m going to show you the backend of one of my Shopify products where all the listing details are. Now, I even have some issues inside of my product listings that I need to fix. For example, I have a minor error indicator and some blank fields.

Sometimes the fields should autopopulate other sections, like the category information. But technically isn’t perfect and sometimes the information will be blank unless you voluntarily fill it in. So with everything else in here that is relevant to your product, you want to make sure that it’s all filled out as much as possible.

• Product organization
• Publishing template
• Stores your listing is published to
• Product title
• Product description
• Product imagery
• Product category
• Product price
• Stock quantity (if physical product)
• Shipping information
• Purchase options, etc.

Try to fill the description out as much as possible, not just like two lines about what the product is. This is a major space for all of your keywords and supportive benefits and options you can share to sell your product. 

Make sure all of that is filled out as well as humanly possible so the computers know exactly where to put you on Pinterest, on Google, and elsewhere. Those details optimize your catalogs everywhere it gets published, and that is vital to keep your listings healthy.

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How to check Pinterest catalog health

To check on your Pinterest catalog health specifically, you’re going to want to go to the Pinterest menu, and in the left and go to catalogs and product groups in the far right menu.

Inside of your diagnostics, you will be able to see an overview of your catalog, if there’s any specific product performance issues, and any catalog health problems.Looking just now, I have ten issues across my merchant catalog to address.

This is really where you want to focus your efforts because if there are any catalog health issues, you can come in here and you can see what they are. Then you can drill down and start to fix them. It’s going to tell you what the issue is, and also what to do.

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Issues to fix right away with catalog issues

Some issues you’ll learn overtime don’t affect you or there’s minor worry to not have them fixed. Things that you really want to really pay attention to though are:

• Missing image links URLs in the product metadata
• Products failed to upload during ingestion
• Currency codes missing, pricing not showing

Sometimes with ingestion things just fail to upload across the integration. You can force the ingestion again and push the data through from wherever your shop listings are sourced when you see the issues. If you manually uploaded things, you will need to manually upload it again. 

You can also add additional data sources in the bottom right-hand corner. If you have other third party apps or shops your listings are also housed in, you can add them as a data source to help sync across and through when you update things from your Pinterest dashboard

Final thoughts and bonus tip with Pinterest catalogs for merchants

Make sure you optimize those product titles and descriptions for Pinterest SEO as well as Google SEO. This is something that a lot of people fail to do because they think they just need to put something cute and brand vibes inside of there.

That’s your bonus tip for today on Pinterest catalogs for merchants. They are different search engines, but you can show up in both if you do this right. If you want to learn more about Pinterest marketing strategy for your brand and your business, the next best place to go is my complete marketing strategy guide I update every year.

Now, I hope that you have had a chance to see your merchant products and Pinterest catalogs in a different light. Also how you can use your store to really make sure that what’s coming over to Pinterest is the highest quality possible, and you are reaching your audience.

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