Visual search for products for online stores and marketplaces

Many users leave online stores, catalogs, and marketplaces if they don’t find the product they want within a minute, according to Shopify research. This decision is facilitated by a huge selection of products on the market, and high competition in many niches.

Visual search allows you to retain the attention of customers and facilitate surfing the site. It gives the site new opportunities and helps not only to remain relevant to the target audience, but also to significantly increase profits.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly developing and is being applied in many spheres and areas: industry, finance, education, medicine and, of course, business.

E-commerce also did not stand aside. So, visual search is based on deep machine learning and computer vision – a combination of algorithms that can recognize and classify products by images (as well as screenshots, pictures from the Internet or photographs). By making a request, the user receives results that are visually similar to the original product.

Visual Search can be compared to keyword search, but it is much more complex because the query is an image. During processing, the system reads and considers visual cues and metadata inherent in the image, and then gives the result.

This simplifies retailing and helps shoppers find what they want faster.

Today there are several large projects actively using the visual search system, including Google Lens, Snapchat Camera Search, Pinterest Lens, eBay Image Search, and others. So, after launching the Google Lens app, Android users can point their phone’s camera at an object, QR code or place, after which the program will show them relevant search results with links to the site.

Ideally, Visual Search should offer not only a specific product, but also related products (similar / related products), as well as form a bundle. For example, if a user searches for a crankshaft in the auto parts catalog, the system will display all related parts that may be needed.

The process of making an online purchase should be as simple and quick as possible, but it is not so rare that the path from viewing a product to purchasing it becomes too difficult for the user, as a result of which the purchase is not made at all. Visual search simplifies this task, makes it understandable for the user, and also brings benefits to the business.

There are several important advantages of the technology:

• Improved determination of the position of goods in the issue

Thanks to visual search, the advertiser can avoid investing in advertising on every site where his products are presented. Along with the introduction of this technology, the approach to the formation of search results is also changing: the first positions are taken by those products that users are looking for most often.

• Understanding the needs of your target audience

Visual Search is an effective marketing tool. Analysis of visual search results helps to understand what your target audience needs, what products are in trend now, what should be emphasized when forming an advertising campaign, etc.

• Increase in sales

The importance of visual search is evident in a wide variety of ecommerce projects and applications. Users are more responsive to engaging images and are more likely to shop. Thanks to machine learning, the system selects the best product photos for them based on the description, metadata, and key product characteristics. This approach increases the engagement of the target audience and increases the company’s revenues.

• Simplifying the buying process

Visual search helps users who want to purchase a specific product to achieve their goal faster. It reduces the number of steps a consumer has to take before purchasing a product, such as entering a keyword into a search, scrolling, viewing results, etc. Instead, he immediately gets the desired product and can make a purchase.

• Reducing the number of cart abandonments

The easier it is for a user to find a product, the fewer problems there are when buying. Shopify research suggests that visual search results in a checkout twice as fast as text-based searches.

The technology helps reduce cart abandonment by eliminating tedious processes that can demotivate and annoy users.

• Cross-selling

Another benefit of visual search is that it encourages cross-selling. Visual Search empowers consumers to imagine how other products combine with a desired product. For example, if a user is looking for a red dress, they might look at a photograph of a woman in such an outfit and with an elegant bag. If he likes the image, he will most likely acquire not only a dress, but also accessories that complement it.

In a situation where there is no desired product on the website, the system can offer the consumer similar products to encourage purchase.

• Improving the efficiency of product search

With the new technology, users can search more efficiently than just text. This is especially important when they do not know the name of the product they are looking for or find it difficult to clearly describe it.

By tracking traffic from search engines to a website using metrics and analytics, companies can understand how many buyers clicked on links to pages, and also see how the implementation of visual search affected the level of sales.

The potential impact of visual search on e-commerce is huge. In online stores and marketplaces, visual search helps shoppers quickly find products in a huge catalog and eliminate language barriers.

AVADA MEDIA specializes in the development and implementation of visual product search technology in online stores, catalogs, web and mobile applications. We offer a product that will help users to make purchases in a multi-channel mode, easily move from brick-and-mortar stores to websites and mobile applications.

Visual Search instantly turns your phone camera into a simple and easy-to-use search tool.

The technology improves the user experience and increases the number of website conversions thanks to flexible algorithms that are completely focused on the user’s needs.

Our experts are aware of the evolution of mobile and multi-channel retailing and use innovative methods to make it easier for shoppers to find the products they want. In the near future, such a system will radically change the picture of purchases in ecommerce.

Visual Search enables potential buyers to instantly discover relevant products and quickly navigate to relevant product pages, which directly contributes to business development.