Visual Search: Short-term Hype or Sustainable Trend?

Visual Search offers companies that thrive on strong product visuals an extremely valuable complement to existing forms of search. Those companies that manage to integrate the technology early on will benefit, while others risk missing the boat.

Taking a picture of a product with your smartphone and using the photo to find products that match the item you are looking for sounds promising and could become a disruptive trend in online retail search. And this is especially true in those industries where visual components of the products are crucial. Various companies in the fashion industry are already using visual search. 

Visual Search scores with simplicity

Users see the advantages of Visual Search technology primarily in its simplicity compared to complex textual or linguistic descriptions of highly visual products. Half of the respondents expect more accurate search results from Visual Search.

Three quarters can already imagine using visual search regularly. In addition, more than half (52 percent) rate the overall impression of the search results as predominantly positive.

Google just ahead of Asos

Who will win the race for visual search supremacy? Is there already a clear winner? And do smaller providers stand any chance at all against the big players?

With 62 percent positive results in the overall impression, Google takes first place in the study, which only relates to the fashion industry, closely followed by Asos (technology: viSenze) with 61 percent and Zalando (technology: cortexica) with 57 percent. The e-commerce giant Amazon comes a distant second with just 42 percent positive ratings.

Experienced Visual Search users rate more positively

How do users rate the search results? Women are significantly more critical than men. Men rate the search results 14 percent more positively than female users. Users who have experience with Visual Search rate the search results significantly more positively (68 percent positive ratings) than inexperienced users (52 percent positive ratings).

Smartphone power users, under-20s, and technology afficionados also give more positive ratings. Overall, however, the user ratings are already at a very good level.

4 tips for the introduction of Visual Search

The introduction of new technologies costs money and time. That is why it should ideally have a successful impact on the business.

1. Put on customer glassesThe use of visual search can offer companies competitive advantages - provided it offers customers added value. This can be found out by simple and effortless user-centered methods and verified as Test&Learn. 
2. Removing barriers to entryCompanies that want to introduce Visual Search should make sure to keep the entry barriers for users as low as possible. Ideally, they should integrate Visual Search directly into existing apps that are already in use. Since users' positive perception of Visual Search increases with the experience they have, it is particularly important to make it as easy as possible for them to get started. 
3. Playing with open cardsEspecially in test phases of Visual Search, users should be made aware that this is a "pilot". In this way, they do not raise the customer's expectations too high, which may then be disappointed. 
4. Good, better, optimal: Pilot phases are primarily there for trial and error. It is particularly important to then let the knowledge gained flow into continuous further flevelopment.