Websites, in the current era have strongly emerged as a salient reality that is looked upon as primary source of information dissemination, advertising, social networking, recruiting or simply for browsing. Depending on its purpose, each website is constructed in a different manner and design to achieve desired levels of ROI (Rate of Investment). This study aims to provide a usability preview of Pinterest.com, a website that is creating waves in social media platform and enjoys a creative set of users looking for “self-expression”.
Website Overview
Pinterest.com is a digital “curation” website (as opposed to the tradition “creation” concept) that has taken the realm of social networking by a storm. Upon joining, users are able to “pin” pictures from a plethora of sources such as magazines, journals, blogs etc.
Strengths
The main strength of the website its unique and simple layout, that enables easy navigation. The color combinations of the website are designed such that they enhance visibility. The text has a high contrast with the white background, which makes legibility high. The features that have contributed to the success of this website have been highlighted below:
Home Feed
Pinterest's Home Feed is its public face for its viewers and has been designed to capture maximum popularity. It allows viewers access to a majority of its important features such as design, marketing and regular updating in a user-friendly manner. Design has been given key importance so that a plethora of informative boards does not result in an overtly crammed homepage. Each user is able to access a customized homepage under the tab “Following”. For viewers a “board” is a place that allows organization of pins by topics and maybe either secret or public.
Figure 1
Pinning
The “Pin” feature allows users to add an image or a video either through the “Pin It bookmarklet” (Figure 2) or by uploading an image of their own choice via their personal databases. The website drives popularity by allowing repining of each pin. Content privacy and piracy issues are avoided by allowing each pin an original source link.
Figure 2
Follow & Unfollow
The “Follow” option enables access to another user's pins which show up on the user's home feed.
Figure 3
The website also allows the same freedom to “Unfollow” the pins of a user (either some or all) without any notifications. Figure 4
Weaknesses
Contradictory Classification of boards and the pins contained is an issue that users face pertaining to board following. In addition, it has been reported by authentic sources that despite Pinterest's claim of linking a pin to its original source, the website is gaining revenues “quietly” by altering and tracking these links. These links are modified via an affiliate tracking code, which links the user back to various ecommerce websites. It is argued that while the company may not be bound legally to disclose this information, it is suggested that in order to gain the loyalty and trust of its users, the website needs to disclose this information openly (Murphy, 2012).
For many businesses Pinterest is the ideal marketing platform, ...
