In February of 2019, online shopping surpassed the market share of general merchandise stores, and worldwide ecommerce sales continue to grow at 20.7%.
Online shopping will continue to grow. But if there’s one advantage that real-world shopping has over virtual, it’s the visual experience.
When you see something that you like in a physical store, you can purchase it on the spot. You might even be inspired to buy another item that complements the one that you’ve set your heart on.
But in online stores, it’s nearly impossible to find the “cute brown dress” that your friend wore yesterday or the “eclectic Middle Eastern ornament” hanging on your neighbor’s front door unless you know the exact keywords for them.
This is where visual artificial intelligence—or visual AI—can help.
Visual AI is a technology that can analyze and extract useful information from images using image processing and deep learning techniques.
This information can be used to intelligently recognize photos for face identification, portrait segmentation, overexposure detection, or other image-related applications.
And if you’re in the ecommerce business, visual AI technology has a few tricks up its sleeves that can help you boost your sales.
Following are some of the best ways you can use visual AI online.
Did you know that people are willing to spend more time with visual and audio content than text content?
If that’s really the case, why are most of the searches we do text-based?
The answer is simple: because there hasn’t been any good-enough technology that can help us do visual searches.
But there are reasons why visual AI technology is being developed seriously.
Its estimated market value in 2019 was $1,695.93 million and is expected to register a compound annual growth rate of 24.82% through 2025.
Google image search volume is also the second most used form of search (22.6%) after Google web search (62.6%) at the top and far more than YouTube search (4.3%) at number three.
Pinterest Lens is among the most advanced visual search tools available today.
Google has a similar image search tool called Google Lens, while Microsoft has also developed visual search for Bing.
Here are some of the ways you can take advantage of visual AI to boost sales in your online store.
Visual AI technology is already alive and kicking today.
The early adopters in the commercial area are the fashion and interior design industries. And looking at the current trends, you can be sure that the technology will continue to grow.
Customers can search using images instead of text and get relevant results. And even if they still use text, they will get more relevant results because of image tagging.
Visual AI can also help ecommerce players plan better marketing campaigns by analyzing their competitors’ visuals. They can also integrate visuals into their SMS marketing to personalize their customers’ experiences, and give them better buying suggestions.
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann summed it perfectly, “The future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords.”
Do you believe in the potential of visual AI to boost ecommerce sales? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.