Hello Reader,

Be honest: you’ve judged a Pin in half a second before.

You’re scrolling, you see a design, and your brain immediately decides one of three things:

“Wait, I need this.”

“Cute, but no.”

“What am I even looking at?”

And that tiny little split-second decision is exactly why Pin design matters.

Not because your Pins need to be the most beautiful thing anyone has ever seen on the internet.

They don’t.

But they do need to do their job quickly.

A good Pin should help someone understand:

What is this about?
Why should I care?
Is this worth clicking?

That’s it.

And when Jana and I sat down for this week’s Pinterest Live, we decided to do something a little different. Instead of teaching Pin design in theory, we pulled up real Pins from different niches and broke down which ones we’d actually click on and why.

We looked at Pins for:

Travel
Food
Health
Web design
Marketing
&& a few other examples

And the patterns were pretty clear.

The Pins we’d click on usually had a few things in common:

They were easy to read.
They made the promise obvious.
They didn’t overcomplicate the design.
The imagery supported the message.
The branding was there, but it didn’t steal the show.
And the copy answered the most important question in the scroller’s brain:

“What’s in it for me?”

That last one is where a lot of people miss it.

Because a Pin can be pretty and still not be clickable.

A Pin can match your brand perfectly and still not make someone care.

A Pin can use your favorite font, colors, and Canva layout and still completely disappear in the feed if the message is too vague.

Pinterest is not the place to make people work to understand what you mean.

Your Pin is more like a billboard on the highway.

Someone is moving fast. They are distracted. They are scanning. You have a very small window to make the topic and value clear.

So before you design your next Pin, ask yourself:

Can someone read this quickly?
Would they know what they’re getting if they clicked?
Does the image make the topic easier to understand?
Is the main promise specific enough to create interest?
Is the branding subtle enough that it supports the Pin instead of competing with it?

If the answer is no, the Pin probably needs a little more work before you publish it.

And if you want to see what this looks like in real examples, go watch this week’s video.

We’re not uploading a new video this week because I’m batching content ahead of July while I’ll be offline, so this is a great one to revisit, especially if Pin design is something you’re trying to get better at.

Watch the full “Pins we would click on” breakdown here:

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By the end, you’ll have a much better eye for what makes a Pin clickable, what’s worth testing in your own designs, and what might be making people scroll right past your content.

Talk soon,
Heather

P.S. If you’ve ever looked at one of your own Pins and thought, “This is cute, but I have no idea if it’s actually good,” this video will help. We’re breaking down the why, not just giving opinions.

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