Visual search on social platforms and search engines is a trend that digital marketers shouldn’t underestimate. A HubSpot study confirmed that the average person can remember 65% of visual content for up to three decades. That said, visualization is an important aspect of digital marketing and equally important in the customer journey and business growth.
Unfortunately, most digital marketers can’t seem to differentiate between visual search and use of images and how both strategies define business growth. While both boost business growth, visual search has a slightly different approach, and businesses such as those offering car title loan have leveraged its potential.
What is Visual Search?
Unlike the use of images in marketing, visual image search is an artificial intelligence and machine learning technology that allows customers to search for products using pictures instead of keywords. This differs from the use of images, where internet users type text-based queries on the internet, click on the “Image tab,” and scroll through pictures.
With this technology, the search process starts with a picture and uses in-depth neural networks to understand the image, using its color, shape, and size. Search engines then serve the exact place, object, or product being searched and its similarities. That said, this technology is the best suited for visual mediums.
This technology can enhance business growth for interior designers, dressing stylists, and others. Generally, if you deal with visual products, this technology can lead to growth in your business.
How Businesses Can Benefit from Visual Search
As more businesses plan to adopt this technology, you should understand and find ways of taking advantage of visual search as soon as possible. Below are the benefits of optimizing your business for visual image search.
1. Reach the Next Generation
Reaching a new audience is the best indicator that small businesses are growing. More than 60% of Gen Z discovering brands through social media platforms and 69% purchasing from online businesses, this is the best time to market your brand outside traditional realms. Using the right tools can take your business to a new audience, facilitating growth.
2. Connect with New Customers
While there is no exact way of how to describe business growth, reaching a new audience and connecting with new customers is a positive indicator of growth. Customers of this age want to make personal connections with websites and online stores before making purchases, and trust helps customers move forward in the sales funnel.
That said, visual discovery enables customers to make an emotional connection, which improves trust and increases the chances of making a purchase decision. Emotional connection is what drives sales growth for various products and services.
3. Increases Your Revenue
An increase in revenue is another indicator of business growth. After making some investments, most entrepreneurs, including those who don’t understand what business development experience is or how to get business development experience, often look forward to business growth and reaping good returns from their investment. Gartner estimates that adopting visual and voice search not only steers business growth but also leads to a more than 30% increase in revenue.
Best Practices for Visual Search
Consider the following to leverage this technology for your business growth;
Use Structured Data
You should provide search engines and social platforms with sufficient information when adding new content to your website for business growth. The best way to improve business growth with this technology is using structured data, which helps your site appear in Google’s snippets.
Add Alternative Text
Also called alt tags or descriptions, these are texts that appear if your images fail to load. They are also read out by search engines to those who use screen readers. This not only leads to business growth but also helps avoid lawsuits from customers who can’t navigate your website due to a lack of alternative texts. Domino’s Pizza, Target, and Pokémon have previously been sued.
Use Image Sitemaps
Having image sitemaps increases the chances of your images being discovered by search engines. More discoveries enable your business to reach new customers, create connections, and grow. Having a sitemap, especially for images loaded through JavaScript, helps search engines identify, crawl, and index the images.
Use Proper Image Size and File Types
You can achieve business growth using this technology only if you use the appropriate size of images and file types. Using appropriate size affects how fast your website loads the images. As you may know, site speed can dispel customers, hindering growth.
Final Thoughts
You should take advantage of advancing technology for business growth. Visual image is a trend that can hasten your business growth only if done correctly. Other technologies to consider for business growth include augmented reality and voice search. How do you think visual image search is impacting businesses? Please share with us in the comments.
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