5 Factors that boost visual search in the field of eCommerce

E-Commerce is quickly making rapid progress in its operation and working for ensuring better online shopping experience to customers. It is ramping up everything from its inventory control to delivery services to searching for optimizing user experience. We all know that people are opting for online purchase as they want a quick product access and this can be fulfilled only with the help of a result-oriented search facility.Visual searching is a recent introduction that has revolutionized the entire online shopping experience to a great extent. This concept was made popular by an eCommerce company Like.com in the year 2006 which was later acquired by Google in the year 2010. With the starting of the year 2016, the visual searching gained worldwide acceptance through Google’s “Images” search that gave it a big boost. This concept was later adopted by Pinterest, which allowed searching based on the pinned photo of the products. Amazon‘s mobile app extension has also embraced visual searching since the year 2014.

Here are the 5 crucial factors that are responsible for the immense popularity and rise of visual search in the eCommerce field.

1. Regular improvements in the field of Artificial Intelligence- 

Artificial intelligence is making gradual improvements in leaps and bounds with the ability of computer software to learn things with the help of data provided to it. Visual search is a field where a software needs to identify the photo items and process the search results by matching the required items.

With the rapid growth in the field of computing power and Big data analysis, the data processing became much easier than before. This has helped computer system to analyze and identify billions of shapes, sizes, pictures, images, objects and other figures for facilitating quick visual search experience.

2. Improvement in the real-time environment- 

The technological advancements in the current artificial system have made the real time results more accurate and reliable than before. For implementing visual search on an eCommerce store based on any platforms like Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, Shopify, 3dCart and others, the results need to be as faster as text based results. However, better computing facilities in the recent years have made the analysis of uploaded photo in the real time scenario much faster and accurate. In this way, visual search can now extend up to the direct end users for improved user experience and customer engagement.

There are various eCommerce A/B testing and heatmap extensions like MockingFish that can provide real-time analytical data to eCommerce store owners for better customer engagement, site design, user experience, conversion rates and much more.

3. Easy availability of visual search as a service-

The swift and easy availability of a service helps in its effective and seamless distribution among people. Once, the service is readily available, there will be automatically more takers for it. Similarly, the visual search is adopted by the eCommerce business segment quickly for offering better online shopping experience. There are visual search service providers like Slyce and Cortexica that have ensured easy availability of visual search services to people by integrating their services into an eCommerce site. CamFind, a mobile app extension also offers visual search services for free of cost.

4. Rise of mobile commerce in day-to-day life-

With the gradual growth of mobile computing, it is now easier for the users to take a photo and transfer it quickly anywhere and at any place. To make the maximum impact in their eCommerce business segment, retailers can implement visual search facility in a seamless manner. Users just have to upload a photo and then search for a particular product for a quick purchase. This enhanced search facility can help in improving the sales and conversion rates for any eCommerce store without many efforts.

5. Higher adoption of Visual Search in the mainstream eCommerce business-

The growth of visual search facility is scripting new history and is quickly expanding into the mainstream eCommerce business. Various large scale retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, J.C. Penney, John Lewis, Urban Outfitters, Home Depot and others provide visual search services through their eCommerce mobile apps. This step has improved the use of visual search among smaller eCommerce companies also. Apart from this, existing visual search providers like Slyce and Cortexica are now available with various popular eCommerce platforms for higher adoption by small retailers.

Conclusion 

It can’t be ruled out that product searching is an important component of every eCommerce store and it needs to be result-oriented for better eCommerce conversion rates. Visual search is a further enhancement in eCommerce services that is aimed at improving customer engagement and online shopping experience. So, embrace it whole heartedly for grabbing optimum business results and sales.