Amazon has launched a new shopping-oriented visual search feature. Known as Lens Live, it builds on Amazon’s existing Lens tool, and adds a real-time component. Users can point their smartphone cameras at various items or scenes to unlock shoppable product information about physical items.
Backing up for context, what is Amazon’s original Lens tool on which Lens Live builds? In the category of visual search, it lets users snap pictures of physical items and upload them to contextualize or identify them. That includes buy buttons for visually similar (or same) items that the search returns.
This competes with Google’s similarly-named Lens tool, and represents a promising visually-oriented form of search. We’ve always discussed how local searches carry higher intent as users are in proximity of a commercial need (e.g., coffee). In this case, shoppable items aren’t just in proximity but in view.
Back to this week’s development, it takes that standard workflow and makes it more natural and user-friendly. In other words, there are fewer finger taps to take a picture, upload it, and then see the results. With Lens Live, object information is revealed as it comes into view, thus saving a few steps.
Fashion & Furniture
The way the UX plays out is that users can open Lens Live, then start scanning their physical surroundings. As searchable items are identified, they become clickable with little dots. Doing so activates a carousel – powered by Amazon’s Rufus – where users can add the same or similar items to their cart or wish list.
When you add it all up, it’s a strong value proposition that checks all the boxes for killer apps, including high-utility and potentially high-frequency. It inherits those traits from search, but is more visual – which is natural in certain types of searches, such as pointing your phone at something versus describing it.
Those types of searches also have another desirable trait: they’re highly monetizable. This comes down to the in-view/proximity principle noted above, but also because the items most likely to be searched visually are products. We’re talking about visually-oriented items like fashion and furniture.
That’s basically why the Googles and Amazons of the world are keen to develop visual search. It future-proofs their businesses. For Google, that means more inputs and formats for its core search business. And for Amazon, it means extending from the confines of the web to make the physical world shoppable.
Tailwinds
So if visual search has all those tailwinds – user utility and strong provider backing – why hasn’t it exploded yet? One answer is that it has… sort of. Google reports 20 billion visual searches per month on Google Lens. That number seems big, but it’s a minute share of the 400 billion monthly text searches.
One reason for visual search’s lack of ubiquity could be its “activation energy.” There are many steps to get it going, including holding up one’s phone, tapping into a specific app, then going through the motions. Amazon’s “Live” updates alleviate that to some degree, but the activation energy is still there.
What visual search might need to reach its tipping point is to be more ambient and automatic. That’s another way of saying that it could be truly unlocked when it’s in smart glasses form – happening in the background as you move throughout your day, and your glasses whisper visual intelligence into your ear.
In fact, that’s already happening. Multimodal AI – another fancy word for visual search with audible outputs – is a core selling point of the breakout hit Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses. That could be a key demand signal for the form factor and use case that will finally vault visual search into ubiquity.
Header image credit: Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash
