While voice may be the lat­est search dar­ling, there’s anoth­er form of search – visu­al – that has gar­nered recent atten­tion from the likes of Pin­ter­est, Blip­par and Google. But are con­sumers ready for it? Are brands?

Why is visual search important?

Here’s a look at why these play­ers care and how visu­al search will impact mar­ket­ing.

Accord­ing to Ted Mann, Pres­i­dent of visu­al search firm Slyce, inter­est in visu­al search is dri­ven by two relat­ed trends:

1. Growth in mobile pho­tog­ra­phy, which has spurred more than 3 bil­lion pho­tos shared dai­ly on social apps
2. And the use of the cam­era as a util­i­ty in shop­ping.

“Com­Score MobiLens has been study­ing this for years, and tak­ing a pho­to of a prod­uct has been con­sis­tent­ly the #1 in-store smart­phone activ­i­ty — even more than phon­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber or friend,” Mann added.

Indeed, there’s a key oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to con­nect with shop­pers using images to find the prod­ucts they’re inter­est­ed in, even if the prac­tice is still some­what nascent.

“Whether the use case is snap­ping a pic­ture of shoes you love to buy or favorite, or see­ing a celebri­ty look you like in a mag­a­zine and snap­ping the out­fit to find some­thing sim­i­lar for less or scan­ning a coupon and sav­ing it as a mobile offer to your phone — visu­al search helps reduce fric­tion and get you to what you’re look­ing for faster,” Mann said. “We’ve even seen users in the Mid­dle East use visu­al search as a kind of trans­la­tion tool, e.g. an Ara­bic speak­er snap­ping a pic­ture of some­thing to be able to search for it on an Eng­lish-lan­guage retail­er.”

What’s more, John Staines, CCO and glob­al direc­tor of sales at shop­ping search engine Yroo, not­ed search results with images have been shown to have a high­er engage­ment and CTR rate than text results alone.

And, from there, it’s not a big leap to pur­chas­es.

“Com­pa­nies like Ama­zon have an app that allows you to scan a phys­i­cal prod­uct in a store and then match it on Amazon.com,” said Bud­dy Scalera, senior direc­tor of con­tent strat­e­gy at the Med­i­cines Com­pa­ny. “That’s a pret­ty bold move that cre­ates a bridge between brick and mor­tar shop­ping and online shop­ping. Google has offered a visu­al search tool for over two years and it just keeps get­ting bet­ter.

Shopping using visual search…

Indeed, shop­pable con­tent seems to hold the most poten­tial for mar­keters and visu­al search.

In fact, per Katie Mullins, paid search spe­cial­ist at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and web design agency Sparx­oo, social media plat­forms, search engines, apps and oth­er dig­i­tal prop­er­ties are mak­ing it more of a native expe­ri­ence for users to buy prod­ucts where they are con­sum­ing visu­al con­tent.

“Audi­ences want to be inspired, and, as a whole, they no longer reject the idea of brands pro­mot­ing con­tent or prod­ucts, so long as it is rel­e­vant, per­son­al­ized to them and help­ful,” she said. “By keep­ing those just-men­tioned attrib­ut­es in mind, brands can work with users to pro­vide a seam­less buy­ing expe­ri­ence where the user views the brand as help­ful and not obtru­sive.”

Mann agreed the oppor­tu­ni­ty in visu­al search lies in cre­at­ing shop­ping moments.

“It’s essen­tial that mar­keters focus on cre­at­ing com­pelling and share­able visu­al con­tent,” Staines added. “Con­tent is to visu­al search what key­words are to text-based search and hav­ing an exten­sive library of high qual­i­ty visu­als is imper­a­tive.”

Fur­ther, Bran­don Sey­mour, founder of SEO agency Bey­mour Con­sult­ing, said mar­keters need to make sure they are tag­ging their images prop­er­ly, includ­ing the metatags, file names and water­marks.

“Visu­al search…will not replace text search any­time soon, but it is becom­ing more use­ful and impor­tant to advanced mobile users.”

Bran­don Sey­mour, Founder — Bey­mour Con­sult­ing

In addi­tion, when con­sumers don’t need to explain to search engines what they’re look­ing for and instead can sim­ply click on prod­ucts to either read more or pur­chase them direct­ly, it will dras­ti­cal­ly improve the expe­ri­ence, which Sey­mour said could eas­i­ly spur more sales.

“Addi­tion­al­ly, images con­tain­ing more than one prod­uct, such as an out­fit, or a liv­ing room set, could cre­ate some ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, and the abil­i­ty to mar­ket oth­er prod­ucts based on periph­er­al intent,” he added.

And this could eas­i­ly expand to include more com­pli­cat­ed retail tasks, like mea­sur­ing sizes, find­ing col­or match­es and acces­soriz­ing out­fits and rooms, Mann said.

“Like­wise, the tech­nol­o­gy can be applied to adver­tis­ing tech to enable bet­ter tar­get­ing against UGC con­tent on Face­book and Insta­gram, not to men­tion video sites like YouTube,” he con­clud­ed.

That’s not to say there aren’t challenges ahead…

While visu­al search has the poten­tial to change con­sumer behav­ior by allow­ing con­sumers to express an aspect of their search needs in a seam­less way, it still has to reach crit­i­cal mass.

“Until then, visu­al search is a bit overblown,” said David Lau, vice pres­i­dent of search and pro­gram­mat­ic media at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency iCross­ing. “Com­pa­nies like CamFind are mon­e­tiz­ing visu­al search, how­ev­er, organ­ic results seem to be lack­ing in qual­i­ty and repeat usage needs improve­ment. There’s also a bit of a par­al­lel with voice search – the advent of bot mar­ket­ing may improve the capa­bil­i­ties of both medi­ums and shift val­ue per­cep­tion.”

In oth­er words, visu­al search tech­nol­o­gy needs time to devel­op. Lau not­ed there are apps that per­form the func­tion, like Google Gog­gles and the afore­men­tioned CamFind, but the results may not yet be impres­sive enough for repeat con­sumer use. What’s more, con­sumers may find the cur­rent method of brows­ing and shop­ping to be quick­er, more enjoy­able or sim­ply more com­fort­able.

Fur­ther, Lau not­ed results with­in visu­al search some­times poor­ly under­stand intent and “a quick glance of the user reviews for both apps shows that users don’t want to be sold some­thing every time they search, but that’s what many engines cur­rent­ly do.”

Staines agreed adop­tion is still in its infan­cy and visu­al search needs to mature before it becomes a game chang­er.

“Adding com­plex­i­ty beyond text-dri­ven input is daunt­ing, and under­stand­ing the moti­va­tion of a searcher exclu­sive­ly from their inter­ac­tion with an image is dif­fi­cult,” he said. “Are they look­ing for this exact item to shop? Or sim­i­lar items? If it’s the lat­ter, a mar­keter needs to key in on cer­tain clues to deter­mine what to present in search results.”

How do you see the future of visu­al search devel­op­ing?