You’ve heard over and over again that your business should be using Pinterest, but are you really taking this advice? And if so, to what extent? Are you paying as much attention to it as you should be? Probably not, you know why? Because business is HUGE on Pinterest. Probably more so than you ever realized.

Is Pinterest part of your strategy? Do you expect to focus more on it in the future? Let us know in the comments.

Pinterest just turned five years old, and the company is sharing some new stats about its growth. The one businesses shouldn’t ignore is that 2/3 of pins come from business websites.

“We started in 2010 as a place for collecting, and have evolved into a visual bookmarking tool that helps tens of millions of people around the world discover and save creative ideas, place to travel, products to buy, recipes to make and more,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews.

The stats:

Those last few should really make businesses taken note. 2 million product pins a day is pretty noteworthy and that’s without a “buy” button, which the company is rumored to be readying. Some, by the way, think that’s going to be pretty huge for ecommerce. Check out this research from ShareThis, which looks at how Pinterest leads to purchases.

“Pinterest’s recent valuation at $11 billion and growing international user base further solidify it as a valuable place for brands to connect with consumers at critical moments of purchase intent,” a spokesperson for ShareThis told us.

“A pin has a higher conversion to a purchase than an endorsement to other social networks in the Face & Body Care, Fashion & Style, Fitness & Health and Home & Garden categories,” they said.

Face & Body Care is Pinterest’s top converting category, according to the study, and pinners are 33% more likely than other social users to make a purchase in that category.

“This is all possible without an easy path to purchase products from within Pinterest,” says ShareThis’ Michalene Becker in a blog post. “If Pinterest adds a ‘Buy’ button, as is rumored, we can only expect these conversion rates to increase”

We recently spoke with Shawn Budde, CEO of payments company 2Checkout, who thinks a Pinterest buy button will change the future of ecommerce.

“With the buy button, Pinterest is moving closer to marketplaces like Etsy or eBay that make it easier for smaller merchants to transact, and thus make it easier for more people to participate in ecommerce opportunities,” he told us. “They help level the playing field with bigger merchants who have access to tools that eliminate friction, such as the best fraud systems, and payment methodologies. The buy button will help small, independent merchants turn interest in their products into revenue.”

14 million articles pinnned a day is another impressive stat, and says a lot about the potential for driving traffic to content. Pinterest is the second leading driver of social media traffic referrals to, according to Shareaholic.

Pinterest recently put out a pair of videos to give businesses some advice on how to make their pins and boards more effective. We also shared some good tips from a long-time Pinterest marketer.

The Pinterest spokesperson shared some additional stats as well: “We doubled our male user base in the U.S. this year. Last year our male user base in the U.S. grew 73% year over year, and has been picking up in the past 6 months (54%) vs. the prior 6 months (40%), which is outpacing overall Pinterest growth.”

You can see more about recently released stats about Pinterest’s growth in male users here. They also recently made a search improvement, which takes the gender of the user into account.

“This year we’re focused on making Pins more actionable (App Pins is one example) and growing internationally,’ the spokesperson says.

Pinterest announced App Pins last month. This is a new type of rich pin for iOS apps that lets users install apps directly from Pinterest.

Pinterest is available in over 30 languages, and has 5 global offices in Tokyo, London, Paris, Berlin and São Paulo. It has a total of 11 offices. Last year, international users grew more than 135%. As of right now, monthly active users are up 150% year over year outside the U.S.

Do you see potential in Pinterest for your business? Share your thoughts.