Pinterest Redesign: Benefits For Your Business

10 Social Networks For Special Interests (click image for larger view and for slideshow)

On the heels of the announcement that it is adding new analytics tools, Pinterest is ready to roll out a new look. The changes are designed to help users find content that they might not have otherwise found, and to help them engage more with content and with users who have posted content. This is good news for Pinterest users as well as businesses with presence on Pinterest.

In a blog post today, Jason Wilson, Pinterest's lead product designer, said the redesign is based on the feedback of a "small group of pinners" who tested the new look in January.

The changes are centered primarily on the layout of pins and pages. "We added a few new things to the close-up view of pins to help you discover things you love that you might not have known about otherwise," said Wilson in the post. For example, users will be able to see all the pins on a board without leaving the page, and from one page they will be able to see content pinned from the same source. This latter capability will present new opportunities to businesses because more of their content will be more readily accessible. (All the more reason to make the content on your site really good.)

[ Learn about Pinterest's beefed-up Web analytics. See Pinterest's New Analytics: What Business Gains. ]

But the change that seems most likely to up the social ante for Pinterest users is the ability to see what "people who pinned this also pinned." Again, this is another huge opportunity for businesses and more reason to take an interest in Pinterest: For example, if content from your company CEO has been pinned, then other content he or she has pinned will also be presented.

Pinterest said this feature will be available to Android and iOS users soon.

All the changes are designed to "make things simpler and cleaner, without requiring you to learn anything new," according to Wilson. Pinterest describes changes such as the addition of bigger pins as "subtle but useful."

The new changes will no doubt hook users more often and more deeply into the Pinterest experience, but there is one that will almost certainly keep them onsite for a longer period of time: Responding to feedback from users who complained about losing their Pinterest place while browsing, Pinterest will now let users who are scrolling through content use the back button to get back to where they started, "no matter how far you've gone," said Wilson in his blog post. Finally, Wilson said, Pinterest has rebuilt its website foundation to make the site more reliable.

The new changes will be rolled out to users by invitation soon.

How is your company using Pinterest? Do these changes make sense to you? Please let us know in the comments section below.

Follow Deb Donston-Miller on Twitter at @debdonston.

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