There’s no denying that ecommerce is changing the way people shop forever. In 2022, 19.7% of all retail sales happened online. And it seems that more people will continue to conduct their transactions through ecommerce platforms and websites for the foreseeable future.
With all the development and changes in online commerce, we’re barely scratching the surface. There are many more innovations that continue to push the boundaries of online shopping. One of those is image-based searching.
In a nutshell, image-based searching allows your potential customers to search for products on your website by uploading an image instead of adding a keyword.
5 Ways Image-based Search Will Improve Conversions
While relatively new, this development is quickly changing the way people shop. Here are a few ways that ecommerce platforms can improve conversions from image-based searches.
1) Make It Easier to Search for Products
Visual shopping can make shopping easier for a batch of online consumers that might have had problems with the written word in the past. There is a slew of people who would prefer a more visual way to search for products.
Let’s say you found a nice sweater on Facebook, and you can’t seem to put a finger on how to describe it. Instead of wracking your brain to spit out the words you can add to a search query, you can copy the image and add it to an image-based search feature. This is just one of the many powers of image recognition technology in ecommerce.
2) More Assertive Ranking in Search Results
With visual search in ecommerce, you can also improve your search results. This is because of Google’s recent affinity towards image-related keywords and alternate text, as the search engine now treats these two as highly relevant for website copies’ SEO standards.
Search experiences have also been changing over the years, with Google Image search now taking up almost 27% of all search queries on the search engine. Ignoring this trend would prove detrimental to your SEO efforts. So having an image-based approach to search engine optimization could help you gain more assertive rankings in search.
3) Improve Product Discovery Experience
With the image-based search for online shopping, you don’t just add another nifty feature to your website. This feature is a highly functional service that will improve people’s shopping experience. Mainly, it helps with product discovery.
In many cases, shoppers end up buying something that they didn’t intend to because they might have stumbled upon something better during their search. So for the cute sweater example earlier, for instance, a shopper might not find the exact match but could find something else that they equally like or like more. Image-based product search helps make that happen for your e-commerce site.
4) Add a Wow Factor to Your Store
Image-based search is but one of the many AI personalization improvements that adds a “wow” factor to your store. The technology is relatively new, meaning people quickly become impressed when you have it on your site.
There’s no denying how powerful the perception of a “shiny new object” can greatly affect people’s perception of your brand. You appear cutting-edge and forward-thinking when you invest in new technology. So, having an image-based search on your website or ecommerce store could help boost your brand significantly.
5) Better Shopping Experiences
At the end of the day, image-based search seeks to improve shopping experiences by making them seamless and memorable. Adding an image-based search on your website helps make that happen.
So once you do have this feature on your site, make sure to tell your audience about it. It will be relatively new to them, so you might need to automate instructionals and support for this feature. That’s why it might be a good idea to add it to your email automations on Pardot. If you don’t have marketing automation set up, you can check out these Pardot alternatives to help people discover your new ecommerce feature on your site.
More Conversions: More Profitability
The use of an image-based search engine should be there to help your business grow its profit. And it likely will with the right execution. Every dollar spent on improving a store’s UX will have an ROI of at least $10. In some cases, it will even go up to $100. The math is simple: the better your store experience, the more profit will come in.
So if you want to start implementing image-based search on your ecommerce platform, see if your site platform supports it. If not, look for alternatives of ecommerce platforms that might. There are many ecommerce platforms to choose from, so don’t worry. There should be one suited for you.
Where Will Ecommerce Be in the Next Few Years?
It’s hard to say where ecommerce will be in the next few years, but it’s safe to assume that development and innovation will only push it further. So don’t rest on your laurels. You might be doing well today, but seasons will change. Always stay adaptable and be ready to pivot when called to do so. With that mindset, your ecommerce efforts will only see more growth.
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