“A picture is worth a thousand words” is an age-old cliché – but one that will become even truer soon. When it comes to product photos, you already understand how important they are; great ones can sell products effortlessly.

But that’s not their only value. While we’ve already covered how you can use your ecommerce photography to bolster your SEO, you can also optimize it for a new way of searching: visual search.

Along with voice search, visual search will change how we all search for information – and products – online. The good news? You can start taking optimizing your images for Google Lens today to get a fierce edge over your competitors.

What Google Lens Means for Ecommerce Photography

Google Lens is very much a smart mobile tech; it scans photographs from your smartphone camera roll, then uses AI to identify an item in a selected photo to find and provide relevant search results.

For ecommerce stores, this could translate into a consumer taking a picture of a dress they like and running it through Google Lens to get information on it – such as where to buy it.

Don’t forget, Millennials and Gen Z are all about their smartphones – and with 62% of them clamoring for more visual search over any other tech advance, this is one area of optimization your ecommerce business really can’t afford to miss out on. After all, these two generations are most likely to shop online with a purchasing power that’s only increasing.

So, how can you take advantage of this? Well, there are two sides to this coin.

Maximize Your Google Lens Visibility with Great Product Photos

It all starts with a great photograph – and specifically, a clean photograph. White background photos are ideal for this purpose, as they put the spotlight on products without distracting a background getting in the way: perfect for AI and machine learning.

That’s not to say that Google Lens won’t scan lifestyle photos in your product photography, but right now, white background photos are the best way to optimize your photo catalog.

It’s worth hiring a professional photographer here to ensure that you have the highest quality possible. Having a beautiful, detailed image won’t just give your browsing consumer an effortless 1,000-word pitch – it’ll also be delivering that same pitch to Google in your organic marketing efforts!

Don’t Forget to Optimize Your Photo SEO – This Is Still Google!

Having gorgeous product photography is a fantastic start, but to really make Google Lens work for you, you’re going to need to ensure that your product image SEO is on point, too.

After all, Google Lens’ AI uses machine learning to identify images and collect information, which means that your photo metadata, on-page writing, and keywords are all going to help push your store up the visual search ranks.

SEO is a vast subject, and one that we’ve covered a more in a dedicated blog post on product photo SEO; the key takeaway here is that first, you need great images; second, you need targeted SEO. Put these together for your products, and you’ll soon find that your business is “in the lens” and ahead of competitors.

Start Optimizing Your Ecommerce Product Photography for Google Lens Today

Visual search is an incredibly exciting development for ecommerce (the possibilities are almost endless!), and you can hop on this futuristic train today! However, before you can take advantage of this visual future, you’ll want to make sure your product images are as high quality and professional as possible.

After all, you don’t want poor photography undoing all your hard work behind the scenes! Creating effortlessly gorgeous photography can be a challenge – so why not hit up the experts here at Yellow Duck Works to see how we can help you?

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