Did Pinterest Hurt Itself With The Redesign? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted on by Ryan Deiss in Marketing Tips, Social Media

I was a little skeptical when I heard that Pinterest was going to unveil an entirely new look during SXSW. People do a lot of stupid crap just to get a little SXSW juice.

It’s not that Pinterest’s design left no room for improvement, but come on… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m not a fan of messing with success, especially when you’ve got something that’s absolutely THRIVING…

BUT, hey, I can’t be right ALL the time… and in this case I’d be happy to be wrong.

That’s because I actually like using Pinterest and I think it’s the best social shopping platform yet.

Why Pinterest is Working

Like I wrote about earlier this month, we’re all “image-clickers” when we go online. For some weird reason, people just like to click on pretty pictures, even if they’re not clearly linked to anything, and ESPECIALLY on mobile devices.

Pinterest happens to be one of the platforms that best caters to this obsession. Or, as our own Social Media guru, Saman Kahn, puts it, “Pinterest is addictive, even if you don’t have an account. You can just click through other people’s profiles for hours.”

The Redesign

The new design is cleaner and minimalist– two things that almost always positive when it comes to web design. Personally, I like it.

The problem is that Pinterest’s visual layout IS its innovation, its USP. So, messing around with it is risky as heck.

Why take risks when there’s no real reward to capture? A little SXSW buzz isn’t worth potentially alienating your users, especially when you’re already growing exponentially…

Once again, don’t mess with what’s working like crazy!

The good news is that I don’t think Pinterest will see much backlash as a result of the changes.

While a LOT of Pinterest users were attached to the retro, non-Facebook feel of the old design… all of the important pieces are still there to keep people clicking.

Pinterest probably planned the SXSW unveiling 6 months ago, before the platform’s growth really started heading for that stratosphere. Still, they should have been more flexible and decided to put the brakes on any major overhauls once Pinterest became the hottest social platform of 2012.

Like we saw last summer with Netflix, major unnecessary changes can backfire big time. The big takeaway is don’t take on major risks without the potential for major rewards.