Online Fashion Searches “Out of Style”
I had the pleasure of being introduced to Robin Allenson, Founder & CEO of Similar.ai, through a mutual friend. The connection was fashion with Robin on the tech side and me on the industry side (sales and new business development). The problems that Similar.ai is looking to solve are real. Are time and efficiency something you value in your online searches? If you’re like me, does it bother you when searching for something very specific, say a black polka dot dress, and you are directed to men’s polka dot socks? Or odder still, I searched for lace shorts on a renown designer’s site only to be shown men’s leather shoes! Why do so many fashion websites over generalize or give irrelevant results? In addition to not servicing the customer, an inefficient search doesn’t generate sales. We can all agree that the web is a phenomenal global marketplace, but many fashion sites could benefit from search engine optimization, deep learning, and leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance customer engagement and drive conversion.
There are those like Amazon who are better at this than most due to the extensive breadth of their product offerings and vast database of fashion language or ontology. For much of the online fashion flock without the scale of Amazon, however, what can be done to narrow searches, retrieve the closest product match, and increase the likelihood of purchase? This is the nut Similar.ai is hoping to crack. Their ontology and artificial intelligence can be integrated with fashion sites to yield more productive searches which translates into increased customer satisfaction and sales. They have built large datasets to capture both the linguistic intent and visual appearance of how people actually look for fashion materials, colors, patterns and more. The result? A unique human like ability to understand queries using words and images. Now that’s useful!
There are many ways to apply AI and deep learning. In addition to retrieving strictly black polka dot dress options, wouldn’t it be helpful to find recommendations for shoes, handbags or jewelry to go with that dress? So many websites suggest “similar” items so when looking for that dress you are shown solid dresses. You’re not likely to buy the polka dot dress as well as a solid dress, but most women would welcome fashion advice on the bag or shoes which go perfectly with the polka dot dress. The British online fashion platform, Farfetch, is a positive example with this capability as is Net-a-Porter.
Since online sales are leading growth for fashion brands today, far over brick and mortar stores, fueling online revenue is on every fashion executive’s mind. We need searches to think smarter and speaking the language of fashion is a necessity. My search for a pink handbag should not retrieve a printed dress with a pink bow. As with “No results found”, these dead ends lead to customer disengagement and missed opportunities which today’s struggling fashion brands just cannot afford.
Follow this blog for Similar.ai meant to illustrate ways in which technology may better service customers, drive engagement, and increase conversion in the ever changing field of fashion.
