Pinterest's new shopping feature connects retailers with consumers

Pinterest announced its latest shopping feature for its site this week. The social search engine's Catalogs and Shopping Ads function allows brands to plug their products into a new shopping space to bring items to the attention of millions of consumers searching for products.

The new feature brings with it several offerings that help match shoppers with products. Brands can now upload a full catalog to Pinterest, creating shoppable Pins that can be shared across the site. Pinterest is offering these businesses a new dashboard to help them organize their feed and make their products more easily discovered by users. Retailers can also utilize a "shop a brand" function that allows users to view specific brand catalogs.

Retailers can also purchase Shopping Ads on Pinterest. Available to all businesses, these ads can promote products and are easy to create through the site's self-serve tool.

On the consumer side, users will have an easier time finding products they want to purchase while searching on Pinterest. The site will now offer personalized shopping recommendations alongside style, home, beauty and DIY Pinterest boards. Users will be shown shoppable product recommendations personalized to what they had been saving on the site.

With the increase of Product Pins, consumers using Pinterest will find more products to search. They can use simple search terms like "midi skirt" or "men's watches" to be shown shopping results right at the top of their feed.

Pinterest hopes that its new shoppable search features will help retailers get in front of consumers who are looking for their products, thus connecting sellers with the right products to the right shoppers.