Pinterest Issue Must Be Fixed - Negatively Affecting Sales

[klstock]

Pinterest has been 'running an experiment to remove the ‘Visit Button’ from Pins that lack a high-quality link.'  

When you make a Pinterest pin, many do not have any visible clickable link - no visit button, and the title is no longer clickable. There is nothing showing the potential customer where to click, they just think it is a dead link.

Pinterest explains that the customer can click the 3 dots in the pin and it will give other options such as to visit the site. The problem is, most customers do NOT know to do this. 

This has been brought up in other threads such as this: https://community.zazzle.com/t5/technical-issues/pinterest-pins-don-t-have-clickable-links/m-p/17836...

There, I posted that I had found a comment from Pinterest giving their explanation of why links/titles in pins were no longer clickable. The explanation was:

Thanks for sharing your perspective and working with me to figure this out. I checked the Pin that you shared based on the screenshot and we are running an experiment to remove the ‘Visit Button’ from Pins that lack a high-quality link. However, other users can still visit the link connected to your Pin by clicking the three dots and select Visit site.

This is and will continue to adversely affect sales. Imagine thousands of pins being made by designers to advertise Christmas sales/products and customers not able to click through on that link. Can someone from Zazzle talk to Pinterest directly and find out what is going on? This bone-headed move on their part of 'hiding the visit button' is negatively affecting designers' and Zazzles' earnings. 

ETA: When I link to my own website, this does not happen. It only happens when I link to Zazzle directly. As per the Pinterest explanation above, why would they be considering a link to Zazzle as 'not a high quality link'? 

[klstock]

Wanted to add - The pin you did for the Zazzle leggings has a title that is clickable and a "visit site" button. I wonder if it will stay that way? I had pins linking to Zazzle that worked before, but have since had the title made unclickable and the "visit site" button removed. I know this isn't happening to all pins linking to Zazzle just some. I am having no luck trying to figure out why some and why not others - for my own and for other designers' pins I have checked. 

[ColsCreations]

Forgot to note - I made all the Sample PIns using Pinterests own browser add-on, so all automatic pins. But I am going to keep them up to monitor if/how they change depending on device and with time etc ...
When I pinned them - they all had a Visit button and clickable titles.

[ColsCreations]

I added comments to each of my six sample pins as to how they look to me on both the Pinterest app on my phone and from my computer. On my phone, all have a big Visit Site button and it's gray on each one. On the computer, they all still have the Visit Site button, but some are blue and some are gray. Will see if/how they change...

[ColsCreations]

@klstock 

Been checking those six test pins on my Sample board every day for changes. I commented on each pin to note how I was seeing it both from my computer and mobile when they were newly created. No changes on anything until today,  7 days later. They all still have a clickable title (though the Walmart pin never had a title and still doesn't) and an obvious Visit Site button. The only change so far is that the comforter from BB&B, its Visit Site button changed from blue to gray when viewing on the computer.

This is how they appear to me as the pin creator. It's come up at least twice now that someone not-me was not seeing one of my pins the same way I was seeing it. Pinterest doesn't have a "back-end" where you can view as the creator and switch to viewing as anyone else. So I think that throws another wrench into this. We can't be certain if what we are seeing as the pinner is what everyone else is seeing. So if anyone wants to add to this little experiment, comment on the pins as to how YOU are seeing them.

https://www.pinterest.com/EverythingColsCreations/sample-pins/

[ColsCreations]

Update:

Jan 7th. Orig comment & test pins made Dec 10. As of tonight, almost a month later, they all still have a big obvious Visit Site button, though in some cases it's changed from blue to gray or vice versa.

[LMGildersleeve]

I found a new column on one of my pins with only the three dot link. To the right there is a column entitled "shop the look". This includes a few other Zazzle products and one from Etsy and another from Amazon. I'm thankful I went back to using my rf number on those products I'm promoting that are not mine.

Also, those pins that I had found several weeks ago with no link title now have either the Visit Site button or the column I mentioned before.

[ColsCreations]

Wait. Are you saying that those "shop this look" items aren't ones you added to the pin yourself?

My most recent pin (Nov 3), I added three products to it when creating the pin (and added my rf# to those links, too) and they now show in that new column you are seeing. The layout was different for them when I first published the pin so that column display is new (I like it better) but I added those things.

Link to Pin

[LMGildersleeve]

I didn't add that "shop this look" column @ColsCreations . That column was added after I shared from Z product page. Like you it wasn't there until some time had past. Pinterest is playing around with our pins.

When I view your backpack pin, you don't have the "shop this look" column on the right. Check out my pin to see if you can see the column.

I know the next thing I say is not what the designers' OP has for a subject however, I've just noticed that my collections pins are being being cut off and the descriptions (on the pin) are also cut with no way of reading them.

[ColsCreations]

Commented on your pin, starting a new thread on the Promoting section to continue this as I know we're straying off @klstock 's original concern.

[Amanda23]

Have you already done this? I can’t seem to find your new post in Promoting. 

[ColsCreations]

Just posted the new thread:

https://community.zazzle.com/t5/promoting/pinterest-shop-this-look-and-other-oddities/td-p/182493

[SaraO]

Do you think it's a waste of time making pins for Zazzle at the moment? All my pins are manual, and some that have lots of views in past have had their link removed. It seems random, not all Zazzle links are removed. I only do about 1 or 2 pins a day. Some that were removed in past came back and others removed. Also if you check your phone and desktop different pins are affected - some that arent clickable on desktop have visit button on phone, and visa versa  - I'd love to know what is deemed a high quality link and what the rules are.

[ColsCreations]

8am, Dec 21

[BKMuir]

Same here -- able to post ??? 11:50 am PACIFIC Time