Creating a Shopfront for Redbubble Products on Pinterest

I wanted to find out how to use Pinterest to create a “shopfront” for some of the products in my Redbubble store Tiokvadrat. This is how I went about doing that.

I will be applying many of the lessons I learned in my previous post, “Effective Pinterest Pins and Boards“, where I took an in depth look at how one experienced user’s was succeeding with Pinterest. I will be creating pins for my some of my mug designs in my shop on Redbubble. I won’t actually be selling the products here, this is just the shop window. (I think it important to think along the lines of being a shop owner.)

I will be using the Google Chrome browser for this task, with the Pinterest Save Button extension installed. That’s all the tools I need. I’ll be working on desktop because, although all this is possible on mobile, it can all get a little fiddly at the small size. It’s nice to have some big browser windows open when working — but remember, 75% of users view Pinterest and Redbubble through mobile devices.

I start by creating a new board at Pinterest. I want to create the board in my free business account at Pinterest (which is available once you have joined Pinterest as a member). Later, I will be able to later get some helpful visitor statistics. (Alternatively, I could just create a normal user board, but then I won’t get those statistics.) Creating a new board is as simple, I just visit my business profile on Pinterest and click Create board.

I name the new board Mugs and Cups by Tiokvadrat:

That’s two keywords and a brand name. A name that’s short enough to show well later. I leave the Visibility box unchecked because I certainly don’t want to hide this board, that would defeat the whole point of creating it.

As soon as I create the board, Pinterest offers me some random pins to save to it. I ignore this because I’m only going to show pins for my own products on this particular board. (However, building other types of board can also be fun, particularly if you start using Pinterest for research.)

The new board is just an empty shell at the moment. I’m prepare it by first giving it a good solid description. Pinterest lets you enter up to 500 characters, and I like to make use of as many as I can to feed the search engines.

While I am here I will also set the board category as Home décor. (I am not sure this is the best choice, but it seems to be the closest match in the category list Pinterest provides.)

OK, now the board is set up and I am ready to start pinning. In a new browser tab I open my Redbubble shop and display the mugs in it.

I have found the easiest way to navigate Redbubble is to tag all my designs with my business name (“tiokvadrat”) and then use the main Redbubble search engine. In this way I can just search for “tiokvadrat mugs” and see all my mug designs:

Redbubble tells me there are nearly 200 designs in my shop. As there are three types of mugs (classic, tall, and travel) that means I have nearly 600 mugs to choose from. Of course, I am not going to pin 600 mugs! Not only do I not have that much patience but I also only want to show my very best mugs on Pinterest. Hopefully, if someone like the mugs I’ve pinned they will then click through to Redbubble and explore more of my designs and on other products.

To start with,  I will narrow down the selection of mugs to just the classic ones using the filters in the left margin. Clicking on the first image takes me through to the product page:

From here I can click the Pinterest Save Button in my browser toolbar:

Which will then show me images that it has found on the page. Here are some of them:

I like the first image best, so I click (once!) on that. The Pinterest Save Button opens a dialog:

Before going any further I want to change the text on the left side under the image. This description has been auto-generated by Redbubble from my work’s title (sometimes you get lucky and get the work’s description here, but in this case not). This text will be used as the description for the pin, so let’s beef it up a bit.

I use a common formula for product titles and descriptions that goes something like this:

[what] – [who] – [where] – [when] – [why] – [how]

I like to use this as a general prompt when writing text, but not slavishly. For this mug I’ll write:

Blue “Girly Swot” classic mug celebrating clever girls! Perfect gift mug for smart women studying at school, college, or university. Make a statement against casual misogyny.

That’s the “sales” text with some meaty keywords. Next I will add my standard “branding” tagline which I add to every product:

Blue “Girly Swot” classic mug celebrating clever girls! Perfect gift for smart women studying at school, college, or university. Make a statement against casual misogyny. Design by Chris Hughes of Tiokvadrat. tiokvadrat.redbubble.com

That should be just the right amount of text for a pin. (If you add too much it will be truncated; if you add too little you will reduce the chance of your pin getting found on Pinterest results.)

Notice that I have included my shop address in the text, but not as a full URL — for some reason, if you include the “https://” in the URL, Pinterest will reject all the text and you will end up with no description at all.

Now I am ready to save the pin to my Pinterest board called “Mugs and Cups by…”. When that’s done, you will get a link to See it now. Clicking that shows you the pin on Pinterest:

At this point it is worth checking that 1) the pin looks like you expect it to, 2) that the text shows and is correct, and that 3) clicking the pin links you back to the product page on Redbubble.

Did you get back to the main product page on Redbubble? You did? Great! Now you have posted a pin that will lead interested Pinterest straight to one of your products on Redbubble, ready to buy or explore your works and products further!

Now go back to your list of classic mugs. Add another mug. Maybe add some other mug designs too. Pin what you like around the theme of mugs. Just remember that every pin will link back to the product page you got it from.

After you have pinned half a dozen images, go to Pinterest and take a look at your board. Here is what mine looks like after a while:

Notice that as well as pinning mugs I have also been pinning designs. This is my preferred style for now, it may change in a few boards.

After a bit of testing to make sure my pins go to the right place and the pin titles and descriptions show up OK, I am now going to go on and complete this little shopfront in Pinterest. In a later blog post I will talk about how to analyze your shopfront’s visitor statistics.

If you would like to see the finished board on Pinterest, take a look here: Tiokvadrat Mugs and Cups.