When is the last time you bought something solely on the basis of a written description of an item, without even seeing a picture of it? If you wish for a particular haircut, are you more interested to try describing it in detail to your hairdresser or bring some photo to your appointment?
In both the situations, an image is something more effective than mere words as our minds are developed to process the visual information. Images grab people’s attention, improve comprehensive information and evoke an emotional reaction as well.
The liking and value of visual content is already clear online. The rapidly growing social network, which is Instagram is solely based on Images. Even the studies reveal that infographics are shared and liked three times more than many other types of content. The tweets that involve a photo get 150% more retweets than the ones without images.
Visual content is starting to infiltrate traditionally text-based search, mainly when it comes to online shopping. According to the current study by eMarketer, more than 72% of the U.S internet users continuously or even often search for the visual content before making a final purchase. Major players including Bing, Google and Pinterest have capitalized on the trend with new visual search products.
Visual Search on Pinterest, Google, and Bing
Different from image search, where web searchers make use of words to spot images, visual search let the users use an image as a query instead of text.
One of the most advanced efforts at visual search is Google Lens, a visual search tool that brings artificial intelligence in use and machine learning to analyze the pictures that you take give you the information which is relevant to those images. For instance: if you take a photo of the restaurant, the Google lens can not just recognize the restaurant, but also give you the hours and links to a menu.
Pinterest has got the visual search application which is called Lens. According to Pinterest, Lens users have doubled in the last six months exponentially. And people are now doing more than 600 million visual searches every day with the Lens.
What does the Pinterest Lens do?
With Pinterest Lens, users take a photograph, then isolate the individual items in the photo and eventually users search for the related objects. Within the online retail category, visual search can be really helpful which lets you display the search engine exactly. It shows what item you want to buy instead of trying to use the words that describe it.
Bing’s visual search like Pinterest Lens, make the users search for images within the images. Different from the Pinterest Lens, which return the results within Pinterest, Bing searches the complete web. The searchers simply select photos and tap on a magnifying glass in order to zoom on a particular object.
How to make your E-commerce site Visually Search In a Friendly way
If you have got an eCommerce site, visual search represents the wave of the future for online shopping. Both Pinterest’s and Bing’s visual search engines showcase the results with links to the sites that sell the particular object. Target is already making use of Pinterest Lens on its website, and other retailers which include American Eagle, Wayfair and Tommy Hilfiger are developing the visual search applications.
If your website uses images, mainly product images, ensure they are properly optimized for visual search with alt tags, descriptive filenames, and metadata. You never know how customers will approach your product. It is possible that some of them might buy the product directly through their friends or family on shopping sites, and others might simply rely on coupons like those found at Raise and buy in bulk. Eventually, all they see is the product image and related information below it. Therefore, all such pieces of textual information will certainly help visual search engines to identify your photos, perk up visual search ranking, and direct researchers potentially to your website so as to make a purchase.
The visual search is not replacing any text search so far, but optimizing for visual search will certainly improve your consumer’s online shopping experience, will drive conversions, increase traffic and will put you in a wonderful position to take benefit of the next big thing in search.