How to Sell on Pinterest with a Shopify Store

To sell on Pinterest with a Shopify store, you set up a free Pinterest business account, claim your store's domain, and add your products as a catalog, either through Pinterest's Shopify app or a product feed URL. Your products then become shoppable product Pins. You can grow them with organic Pinning for free and add shopping ads when you're ready to spend.

Pinterest isn't like most social apps. People go there to plan things: a kitchen redo, a wedding, a winter wardrobe, a birthday gift. A lot of those plans end in a purchase, which makes it a good fit for stores that sell anything visual. This guide covers the setup in the order you'll do it, then what to check, what's free, and how to market your products once they're live.

What you need before you start

Get these ready first and the setup goes much faster:

• A live Shopify store with a real domain, working checkout, and clear shipping and returns pages.
• A business email you can use for the Pinterest account.
• Access to your domain settings or your Shopify theme, so you can claim your website.
• Clean product data: descriptive titles, full descriptions, correct prices and stock, and good images.
• A decision on how you'll send products: Pinterest's own Shopify app, or a product feed URL from a feed app.
• A small test budget if you plan to run ads. You can skip this and stay organic at first.

How to sell on Pinterest with Shopify: 9 steps

1. Create a Pinterest business account

Go to Pinterest and sign up for a business account, or convert your existing personal account in the settings. A business account gives you analytics, the ads tools, catalogs and the option to claim your website. Fill in your profile properly: store name, a short description of what you sell, your logo and your website link.

2. Claim your Shopify domain

Claiming your website tells Pinterest you own the store. Your profile shows your domain, you get analytics for Pins that link to your site, and it's needed before you can upload a catalog.

Pinterest gives you a few ways to verify, such as adding a meta tag to your site's header or a DNS record with your domain provider. If you use Pinterest's Shopify app, it can handle this step for you. Verification can take a little while to show up, so do it early.

3. Set up conversion tracking

If you want to know which Pins and ads lead to sales, you need the Pinterest tag on your store. The usual route on Shopify is Pinterest's own app, which can add the tag for you. Without it, you'll see clicks and saves but not purchases, and ad campaigns have much less data to optimize toward.

4. Pick how your products get into a catalog

A Pinterest catalog is the list of products Pinterest turns into product Pins. There are two common ways to fill it from Shopify:

Many stores start with the app. A feed suits you better if you need to leave out certain collections, send different images, add custom labels for ad groups, or reuse the same feed you already send to Google or Meta. If feeds are new to you, our guide to the product feed for Shopify explains the fields and the usual mistakes.

5. Clean up your product data

Pinterest uses your catalog data to show products in search, related Pins and shopping surfaces. Before you upload, check:

• Titles: say what the product is, with the useful details people search for (material, color, style). "Linen Duvet Cover, Sage Green, Queen" beats "The Sage".
• Descriptions: write real sentences about use, size and materials. Pinterest is a search engine, so these words matter.
• Images: sharp, well lit, no heavy text overlays. Vertical images tend to suit the Pinterest feed best.
• Price and availability: they must match your product page. Mismatches are a common reason items get rejected.
• Identifiers and category: add GTINs where your products have them, plus brand and a product category.
• Links: every product link should open a working product page, not a password page or a 404.

6. Add your catalog data source

In Pinterest's business tools, open Catalogs and create a data source. If you use the Shopify app, follow its steps to sync. If you use a feed, paste the feed URL, choose the currency and country, and set it to fetch on a schedule so price and stock changes keep flowing through.

Pinterest accepts several feed formats, including the Google-style XML that many feed apps already produce. That means one well-built feed can often serve Google, Meta and Pinterest.

7. Check the ingestion report and fix errors

After the first fetch, Pinterest shows how many products it accepted and lists any errors or warnings. Common ones include missing images, broken links, price mismatches and missing required fields. Fix them at the source (in Shopify or your feed settings), then wait for the next scheduled fetch rather than editing things by hand in Pinterest.

8. Organize products into product groups

Product groups are sets of products inside your catalog, for example "Bedding", "Under $50" or "Bestsellers". You'll use them to organize your shop on your profile and to choose what each shopping campaign promotes. Groups can be built from fields in your data like product type, brand, price or custom labels, so it pays to set those fields up with this in mind.

9. Start Pinning, then launch shopping ads

Once your catalog is approved, your products become product Pins showing price and availability. Save your best products to well-named boards, and keep posting regular Pins (lifestyle photos, short videos, how-to ideas) that link to product pages.

When you want more reach, create a shopping (catalog) campaign in Pinterest Ads Manager, pick a product group, set a daily budget and choose a goal such as conversions or traffic. Start small with one or two product groups, let the campaign run long enough to collect data, then shift budget toward what sells.

What to check after setup

Run through this list during the first couple of weeks:

1. Domain claimed: your profile shows your verified website.
2. Tag firing: test page visits, add to cart and checkout events with Pinterest's tag tools.
3. Catalog health: most products ingested, with errors falling over time.
4. Feed freshness: a price or stock change in Shopify shows up in Pinterest after the next fetch.
5. Product Pins: open a few and check the price, title and image look right on mobile.
6. Links: click through from a product Pin and confirm you land on the right variant.
7. Product groups: each group contains the products you expect, and none is empty.

Can you sell on Pinterest for free?

Yes, you can start selling on Pinterest for free. Here's what costs nothing and what doesn't:

Selling on Pinterest for free comes down to organic reach: Pinning consistently, writing searchable titles and descriptions, and keeping your catalog clean so product Pins show up in search and related results. It's slower than ads, but Pins can keep bringing visits for a long time after you post them, which is less true on most other platforms.

A practical plan is to run organic for a while, see which products get saves and clicks, then put a small ad budget behind those.

Pinterest marketing for ecommerce: 10 tips

1. Think in seasons, early. Pinners plan ahead, so publish holiday, back-to-school or summer content well before the date. If you're planning a big sale, our Black Friday ad ideas work for Pinterest catalog campaigns too.
2. Write for search. Use the words people actually type in Pin titles, descriptions and board names. "Small balcony garden ideas" gets found; "Our new range" doesn't.
3. Use vertical images. Tall images take up more space in the feed. Keep product photos clean and add lifestyle shots that show the item in use.
4. Mix product Pins with idea Pins. Not every Pin should be a hard sell. Room ideas, outfit combos and how-tos that feature your products get saved and shared.
5. Build boards around how people plan. "Cozy Reading Nook", "Minimalist Desk Setup" and "Gifts for Gardeners" beat a single board named after your store.
6. Post consistently. A steady flow of fresh Pins usually does better than a big batch once a month.
7. Add video. Short clips showing texture, fit or how something works often catch attention in the feed.
8. Use custom labels for smarter campaigns. Tag products as bestsellers, high margin, seasonal or clearance, then build product groups and campaigns around those labels.
9. Retarget your visitors. With the tag installed, you can show product ads to people who viewed products but didn't buy.
10. Watch saves, not just clicks. Saves signal intent and future traffic. Products with lots of saves are good candidates for ad spend.

Selling on more than one visual platform? The steps for selling on Instagram look a lot like these, and the same clean catalog data helps both.

Common mistakes when selling on Pinterest

• Skipping the domain claim. It blocks catalogs and hides useful analytics.
• No tag, or a broken tag. Ads end up optimizing on clicks instead of sales, and you can't tell what's working.
• Thin product titles. Brand-only or made-up names don't match what people search.
• Stale prices or stock. If the feed isn't refreshed regularly, Pinterest may show the wrong price or reject items.
• Square or cluttered images. They get lost in a feed made for tall, clean visuals.
• Uploading everything. Leave out products you can't ship, samples, gift cards or items with poor images.
• Judging too fast. Organic Pinterest builds over weeks and months. Give it time before deciding it doesn't work.

How Awesome Feeds helps

Awesome Feeds builds product feeds from your Shopify catalog for Meta and Google, and updates them automatically when products, prices or stock change. Pinterest catalogs accept the same Google-format XML, so you can add an Awesome Feeds feed URL as a scheduled data source in Pinterest. There's no Pinterest-specific feed type or direct integration. You can choose which collections and variants go in, set five custom labels for product groups, and resize images to a chosen aspect ratio. Plans start at $24/month with a 7-day free trial. See using your feed for TikTok and Pinterest catalogs or install Awesome Feeds.