With the rise of online shopping, e-commerce platforms are coming up with all kinds of ways to offer consumers experiences similar to those of bricks-and-mortar stores.
Pinterest, for example, has unveiled new features available in France, Canada, Germany and Australia, to improve the online shopping experience on its site. Here's a look at what these new features will change for Pinners and internet shoppers.
The pandemic has served to accelerate some of the changes already underway in consumer buying habits around the world. The closure of bricks-and-mortar stores — especially in the fashion sector — unsurprisingly helped give e-commerce a boost — a trend that looks set to continue long after the pandemic.
The sector's main players are therefore working hard to optimise the online shopping experience, and creating ways of transposing the services offered in stores onto the web.
A life-sized storefront
This is what Pinterest is hoping to achieve with its new freshly-launched features for shoppers, as well as for sellers. The image-based social media platform, which already lets users save inspirations and favourite products, now offers them a "Shopping List" — a kind of virtual storefront grouping together all the product Pins they have previously saved.