Take a successful feature out of a successful website and turn that feature as the main service of your new website and what do you have? Another successful website! And Pinterest.com is a good proof that this formula works. If you are familiar with Facebook, you know that you can post photos, images, videos or even what you are currently doing and wait for your friends to react to it. If you get invited to join Pinterest, that’s what actually you can do on their site. The only thing Pinterest did differently is that they repackaged this feature as being an online pinboard, made this the main feature and created a layout that echoes its main purpose.
And the result?
The site is now getting 421 million page views which is a 2,000% increase in a year’s time! It’s also enjoying a 45% monthly growth! According to TechCrunch, they also won $27 million worth of funding. They also won the Best Start Up of 2011 award from TechCrunch. All these in as little as two years (it was born on Thanksgiving Day 2009). So what are the factors that lead to its success? We list them below.
1 – Visually appealling. If you go to their website, the point of their service is so that you can post images you have found that means a lot to you and to share with others. The interesting bit is that you can do this with Facebook. But because the images at the Pinterest website are much bigger, then the images standout. You also have a bigger audience who have the same feeling or thoughts with the subject you have posted. People can make comments and show their approval of images you have pinned on.
2 – It has a viral element built in. Because of the bigger audience then the more chances of your pin ups can go viral. Just go to the home page and you can see what others have pinned. The layout alone makes you want to join to either comment, pin your favourite photo or do both!
3 – It’s user driven and is building a community. The more people share photos for others to see, the more it draws others to join in order to participate. And if you like what others posted, then it builds a lot of connections between you and the author. Being users driven is a key to growth for a lot of websites – just think of online forums and social media sites. But being user driven is not enough. Instagram is a photo sharing site similar to Pinterest but there are more opportunites to build connections within Pinterest.
It’s just these three ingredients that made Pinterest took off. The rest (media coverage, funding, etc.) followed. Thus, when they were getting these viral traffic, they became more visible to VCs and online publications like TechCrunc and this site. It’s also interesting that these three ingredients are also present in Facebook which is why it is one of the most successful social media sites to date.
Moral of the story is: taking a successful feature out of a successful website will increase your website’s chances of being a success.
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