Visualization is without a doubt essential to digital marketing, but it is likewise essential for each and every touchpoint along the consumer journey. This is especially true with regard to the process of product discovery, as customers are growing rising frustrated with wading through searches that are irrelevant to their needs. Because of this, visual search technology has taken on a far more significant role.
Visual search will have a significant impact on e-commerce marketing, not only because it will revolutionize the manner in which customers buy online for aesthetically pleasing products, but also because it will raise the bar for what is expected of the customer experience. I will describe the technology of visual search, how it operates, and the reasons why it will have an impact on your digital team in the years to come in this article.
What does “Visual Search” Specifically Entail?
Visual search is a technology developed by artificial intelligence that enables users to perform online searches by pointing their web browsers to images rather than typing in keywords.
This is distinct from a traditional “Image Search,” in which a user types a textual query into Google, selects the “Images” tab, and then browses through a collection of images that best match their query.
Alternatively, a visual search begins with an image and uses deep neural systems to comprehend what is contained inside it. These networks take into account the dimensions of the object as well as its shape and color. The end result for the user is either the specific item or location that was being looked for or something that is extremely similar to it.
It should come as no surprise that visual search functions most effectively in visual mediums. Visual search is not likely to be helpful if you are looking for the appropriate college to attend, the best tax professional to hire, or the best editing software to purchase.
The visual search may be the most effective technique you can use if, on the other hand, you are looking for a specific type of home architecture, a costume for a special occasion, or info about a location that you have found yourself in at the current time.
Keep in mind that approximately ninety percent of the knowledge that enters our brain is in visual form. When we try to provide an accurate description of anything we see, we are sometimes at a loss for words. For this reason, the largest companies in the world are pouring resources into developing visual searches.
Who Exactly Is Using Visual Search?
You can find out that quite a few well-known organizations are using visual search by conducting a speedy (and text-based!) search on Google. These companies also talk a great deal about using visual search. Google itself is by far the most important of these.
In the past few years, Google has been rolling out capabilities for visual search that it calls “Google Lens.” These skills can execute a variety of mind-blowing acts that enhance the learning process even more effortlessly in your day-to-day life.
Take, for instance, the scenario in which you are discovering a new location and come upon a cafe that you would wish to visit. Because the name of the business or its address is difficult to make out from across the street, you will need to use Google Lens to analyze an image of the location. In a matter of seconds, you are presented with the establishment’s name, location, meal, Google ratings, testimonials, and even notifications if any of your friends have dined there previously.
Although a merchant account can play a pivotal role in promoting growth, obtaining one can be a high risk merchant solutions for many companies. Traditionally, big banks look at factors such as a company’s industry, sales volume, ticket size, time in operation, financial history and the credit rating of its owners when deciding whether to approve or decline an application.
Since Pinterest is primarily a visual platform, incorporating visual search into their product plan was an obvious choice. Users can take a picture of an item of clothing they like, upload it to Pinterest for a visual search, see what other retailers are selling that is comparable, and make a purchase without leaving Pinterest.
Pinterest is also developing a technology that will enable users to expand upon the outfits they make using the platform. For instance, if you purchase a new pair of shoes, you can utilize a visual search to choose an outfit that goes well with them.
Businesses such as Pinterest have been successful in making the provision of this technology a central tenet of their operations. Retailer brands are also interested in directly participating in the action.
Visual search finds its obvious uses in the beauty and home décor industries; nevertheless, it is also being utilized in a wide variety of other fields, including home repair and real estate.
However, visual search will still have an impact on the way you market, notably in the five areas that are outlined in the following paragraphs. This is true even if you do not work in an industry that is focused on the visual arts.
Visual Search Will Impact Marketing in Four Key Ways
Increasing expectations around digital transformation.
Consider the most enjoyable interaction you’ve ever had with a piece of digital technology. Perhaps you were doing your shopping on an e-commerce website when you came across an amazing deal for an awesome product, and you paid for it by using your thumbprint.
You could also have used your smartphone as a digital key and booked into your hotel suite online, which would have allowed you to avoid the hotel concierge.
You have a clear recollection of whatever it was. And now you judge the digital experience of every other company based on your own. That is exactly what the benefits of using visual search for your company are going to be, regardless of whether or not you actually utilize it.
It really is incredible how rapidly customers’ expectations may shift, don’t you think?
These days, site users anticipate being able to locate things through the use of photos. 69% of young consumers, according to research conducted by Accenture, are more likely to make purchases based on visually-oriented searches.
For instance, one of the studies that we carried out indicated that customers who used text-based search spent two minutes and 37 seconds to find the appropriate kind of clothing, whereas customers who used visual search identified the appropriate product in just twenty-seven seconds.
This encounter both validates the trend toward increasing impatience among customers and satisfies that trend. This rate of speed will quickly become the standard practice in a great many different fields.
The optimization of social influencers.
The retail sector is one that frequently makes use of many types of influencers today. In point of fact, Retail Dive found that 89% of luxury businesses reported using influencers, with athletic brands coming in second at 85% and beauty brands coming in third at 80%.
However, influencers have not yet realized their full potential, and visual search is one tool that can assist them in doing so.
At this time, it is common practice for social influencers to post about a certain item that they are wearing and encourage users to purchase that particular item on the retailer’s website.
There are two new ways in which customers might be encouraged to make additional purchases from the merchant when they use visual search.
First, a visual search engine can analyze the photograph of the influencer and categorize the various components of her attire. After then, users can search for each component of the dress to obtain the complete ensemble.
To put it another way, you might make an investment in influencer marketing in order to sell a single item to a client for the price of $69.00. You could even make her entire outfit shoppable and offer things for $300 if you choose to do so.
Second, users might enjoy the outfit she’s wearing but be interested in seeing additional options that are comparable. Customers have access to a considerably greater variety of purchasing possibilities thanks to visual search, which makes it possible for them to search within the same category of clothes.
An increase in shoppable articles.
Consider for a moment how antiquated the practice of purchasing advertising space in the physical version of a magazine is. Salespeople can only estimate the number of people who will view an advertisement by the number of copies sold or distributed.
This makes little sense in a world where we can buy an internet advertisement and precisely measure the number of customers who saw the advertisement, clicked on it, and bought a product as a direct result of the advertisement.
In the past ten years, businesses have spent millions of dollars on physical advertisements that they were unable to fully track. However, marketers have become savvier and have found a means to achieve a greater return on investment (ROI). And now we are on the verge of witnessing history repeat itself.
The current trend in business is for corporations to invest millions of dollars in content marketing, but there isn’t a good way to measure the return on investment (ROI). Even if you know how many people visited your website, how long they remained, and which links they clicked on to get there, that information is useless unless it leads to actual sales.
The results for search engine optimization (SEO).
The majority of the tedium that comes with SEO is caused by all of the tagging that must be done. Visual search enables marketers to work more efficiently and effectively on their optimization, rather than just working harder.
Deep tagging is an image-to-text feature that is incorporated into the technology. This feature tags photos automatically and renders them understandable for search engines such as Google, in addition to textual search results on websites. With deep tagging, a picture can have a comprehensive list of tags attached to it in a matter of milliseconds.
The effectiveness of visual searches is significantly improved as a result.
Because search engines were unable to interpret what was actually included in an image up to this point, it was necessary for real people to produce tags for each and every image. This acted as a barrier in many different ways.
To begin, a single image can have a number of distinct tags assigned to it by a variety of users. In addition, because manually tagging content is such a difficult process, it is simple for marketers to write only the tags that they consider to be the most significant and to omit the more intricate tags.
Your photographs are now optimized for search engine optimization (SEO), can be understood by text-based search engines, and most crucially, can be readily found by customers. This is all because of the magic of visual search.
