Social media juggernaut Pinterest is adding a new benefit to their popular social scrapbooking website in the coming months: the ability to purchase pinned items through a new "Buy it" button. Until now, Pinterest has served mainly as a website reserved for planning, and the company hopes the new foray into the e-commerce market will make the website more interactive and satisfying to users.

The new button will allow users to purchase items without being redirected to an additional webpage. Instead, they will be able to purchase products from within the box of the pinned item. Pinterest founder Ben Silberman thinks the addition of the new e-commerce element will prove to be more user-friendly for the 80 percent of users who view the pin board through the app on their smartphone. The small size of the screen on mobile devices makes it more convenient for users to buy a product within the pin.

Pinterest officials say the new buy button was developed in response to demand from both pinners and businesses. U.S. iPhone and iPad users can expect to see the new buying option at the end of this month, while Android users will be able to access the new tool in future releases.

Users will be able to filter items by price and color when searching for products to purchase. Pinterest has partnered with Apple Pay, Stripe and PayPal to make the buying experience secure and easy. Users can initially expect to see 2 million buyable pins available from retailers such as Macy's, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.

Other businesses wanting to make their products directly available to consumers through Pinterest can use the service Shopify — an e-commerce platform with which Pinterest has partnered — to easily convert their products into buyable pins. The company has also partnered with Demandware, and retailers using the Demandware platform will be able to utilize buyable pins within the coming weeks.

Pinterest is not charging retailers a fee to add buyable pins and is not taking a percentage of sales, and each retailer will remain in charge of the customer service and shipping options of items purchased. However, some marketers suspect the company may charge retailers a fee to implement buyable pins in the future.

The real moneymaking opportunity for Pinterest with the launch of buyable pins is the new promoted pins feature. Retailers will be able to purchase special promoted pins in order for their products to receive better placement.

With the number of pins growing 75 percent every year, promoted pins and buyable pins have the potential to be tremendously successful. Current data collected by Pinterest states that 87 percent of Pinterest users have purchased items based on a product they have pinned.

Buyable pins eliminate the additional search many users have to perform after pinning a wanted item not connected to the product's website — streamlining the buying process for pinners ready to make a purchase.