Top 5 Ways Computer Vision Can Improve Online Shopping and Boost Revenue

Brad Dwyer -

Few things are as natural a fit as ecommerce and computer vision. With the bulk of online retail experiences being built on quality image data uploaded by both storefronts and customers, computer vision has the power to use all of that data to elevate the online shopping experience.

Ecommerce marketplaces are using computer vision to quickly connect their customers to products related to their interests, while also performing the important tasks of assigning proper product descriptors and performing quality checks on the images being uploaded to their platform. In turn, customers of these marketplaces can make confident buying decisions knowing that they are being presented with merchandise that most accurately reflects their wants and needs.

Here are five ways that ecommerce businesses are tapping into computer vision to boost their business:

Finding similar products from photos.

It’s as simple as dropping in a picture to search. Sometimes customers won’t know the right descriptive words to find exactly what they’re searching for. By providing shoppers with the option to upload a picture, retailers can then automatically pull products with similar characteristics from their inventory. This allows online marketplaces to get their customers headed in the right direction, faster.

Recommendations and Upsells

Identifying you company's products in social media posts.

Offer up recommended products based on a customer’s perceived interest. If a shopper is looking at a leather armchair in a modern style, a retailer can automatically display other similar armchairs in their inventory, keeping a customer shopping on their website. Retailers can provide recommendations based on a customer’s past viewing history, even sharing interior design plans for an entire room or putting together a full outfit recommendation, instead of just one-off pieces.

Image Classification and Attribution

Automatically tagging product images with keywords.

Uploading images to an online storefront can be time consuming—but what if products were automatically detected, categorized and labeled? Computer vision can process thousands of images automatically, from object detection to multi-label classifications in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually. Online retailers using this capability can get products listed more quickly and accurately than their competitors.

Customer Discovery

Duplicating a customer's physical object to visualize what it would look like somewhere else.

While online shopping doesn’t allow for testing out a chair or trying on a shirt before purchase, computer vision can power an augmented reality function to help the shopper envision the product in their home or on their person. If a customer is uploading images of products for a visual search or AR experience that a storefront doesn’t have, they can make note of merchandise that is lacking from their inventory.

If you haven’t started incorporating computer vision into your ecommerce business, you can start today. Software companies like Roboflow give you the tools to integrate computer vision into your applications — no longer do you need to hire a team of machine learning experts to take advantage of all computer vision has to offer. Contact sales to learn more or try Roboflow risk free.