Pinterest: How Visual Discovery Became the Product Experience

As a young boy, Ben Silbermann collected dead bugs and pinned them to a thick cardboard sheet so he could look at them later. He liked arranging physical objects in neat rows. Many years later, in 2010, he wanted to build a website that did the same thing. 

He wanted a simple digital board for collecting pictures. He called it Pinterest. He used a strict rule called visual discovery. This rule helps people find new ideas just by looking at pictures, rather than typing words. Today, millions of people use this digital board to plan their daily lives.  

How Visual Discovery Replaces Text Search

Before this website existed, finding a dinner recipe was pretty boring. A person typed words into a Google search box and read long lines of text. Ben completely changed this old habit. His workers built a long web page filled with bright square pictures. 

A user scrolls down, sees a picture of a chocolate cake, and clicks it. Then the computer immediately shows him fifty more pictures of different cakes. This fast image matching is the main principle of visual discovery. The user does not need to type any words to find what he wants.

Other computer companies wanted users to talk and argue on their websites. Pinterest ignored them and created a very different layout. The owners made the “Save” button the most important tool instead of a large comment box. 

Users simply look at pictures of different items and save them to their own digital board. This easy saving action makes visual discovery feel very peaceful. A person plans his future house without reading angry messages on the computer screen. 

The screen also helps a user organise these ideas easily. A woman finds a picture of a green-painted wall. She creates a digital folder called ‘Living Room’ and saves the picture inside it. 

She then finds a picture of a glass lamp and saves it in the same folder. This simple sorting makes visual discovery very useful. The user builds a complete physical plan for her actual house on her own, with many options to choose from.

This simple image search works very well. By 2024, the company had more than five hundred million active users each month. People do not open the app to look at photos of old friends; they open it to find new things to buy. This daily habit makes visual discovery a highly profitable business. A bride uses the app to find a white wedding dress, and a father uses it to find ideas for a birthday party.

The business uses this behaviour to generate huge profits. A shoe company pays to place a picture of a red sneaker on the screen. The sneaker image looks exactly like a normal user picture. 

Buyers scroll down, see the red shoe, and click the picture to buy it directly from the shoe store. This kind of smart advertising is pure visual discovery. Pinterest calls these ads ‘promoted pins’ and does not annoy the buyer. It actually helps him find a physical item he wants to buy.

Old television ads annoyed buyers because they stopped their favourite shows. Pinterest made ads seem like a helpful idea. A user searches for a wooden dining table. A furniture shop shows a picture of a wooden table. The user happily saves that exact picture, so the buyer gets a good idea and the shop makes a quick cash sale.

This simple picture rule brings in billions of dollars. In 2023, the company made over $3 billion in pure cash from these picture adverts alone. Shops gladly pay high fees because buyers on this website are already ready to spend. This huge cash amount shows the real value of visual discovery. A business makes a fortune simply by showing buyers exactly what they want to see.

Also read: Dropbox: How Referral Marketing Accelerated User Growth

Many internet companies force users to read lengthy text updates. Then they wonder why users feel stressed and tired. Pinterest proved that a simple digital board works much better. Honest visual discovery helps ordinary people build their future plans without any unwanted text.

Loved this article? Read more insightful articles on Brand Custodian.

–Written by Rajnish Singh, a copywriter and strategist with a background in fast-paced journalism, who explores the gap between what brands promise and how consumers actually behave.