Importance Of Image Annotation For The eCommerce Industry

Online shoppers report that 88% would not revisit a website if they had a negative user experience. In fact, poor usability contributes to the demise of 70% of online businesses.

Today’s customers don’t prefer cookie-cutter approaches. They expect valuable interactions. And when it comes to the eCommerce industry, AI is increasingly used to create such experiences. Voice-enabled shopping assistants, personalized shopping experiences, facial-recognition-based payment methods, and automatic purchase recommendations are a few ways eCommerce businesses use AI to fuel genuine buying experiences. Image annotation is needed to train that underlying AI algorithm to perform such tasks and assist consumers. 

However, the process of image annotation is time-consuming and tedious. This rationalizes why various eStores prefer to outsource image annotation services. 

Read on to know how image annotation is a crucial part of the future of eCommerce and why outsourcing this service is a wise choice for online businesses.

The rising popularity of image annotation

Image annotation is a labeling technique for computer vision models. This enables computers to comprehend digital images at an advanced level and interpret visual data precisely like humans. It categorizes images in a dataset for training a machine learning model. In short, image annotation labels the features you want your system to be able to recognize.

The annotating task is typically carried out manually with the help of a computer assistant. A machine learning engineer is employed to predetermine the labels or “classes” for providing image-specific information to the computer vision model. This helps the model predict and identify any pre-set features in unannotated images. You can always outsource image annotation services to expect more agility in the process.

Why is image annotation important for your eCommerce store?

Here are some reasons why image annotation services can enhance your eCommerce’s value proposition:

• Enhance visual search

Labels are pivotal for machine learning models to identify objects in images quickly. When images of your eStore are correctly annotated and categorized, users can easily see and search for the products that they wish to buy.

For instance, if a consumer saves an image of a product but forgets the specifics, they can easily locate the product by dragging the saved image into the search bar. You can also outsource data entry services and image annotation for better results. 

• Improve user experience with accurate classification

One of the core operations of eCommerce companies is categorizing and listing products on their platforms (For example – listing products on Amazon, Amazon is the platform). By annotating and labeling images with precise captions and keywords, the eStore can make it easier for the customers to find products, thus improving user experience. This task is best accomplished by outsourcing image and video annotation services. 

You can provide accurate classifications of the product images you upload and attach labels to them. The product description and photographs should match exactly to avoid consumer confusion, and the image quality should be appropriate for the website. Through machine learning, you may teach the system to tag particular descriptions and keywords with photographs while confirming the accuracy of those images.

• Improve product recommendation

Image and video annotation services help suggest items based on customers’ purchases or searches. It can streamline users’ search for products and services on an eCommerce platform. Thus, it may make them buy additional items they have contemplated buying. Most of the time, customers look for convenience as a differentiator in an online store.

Therefore, if a customer comes in seeking the perfect short white dress, the platform can display all of the short white dresses that the eStore has right away. This enhances the buying experience, eliminates the necessity for product filtering, and speeds up the consumer journey. It requires a skilled team of experts to correctly label, tag, and classify objects in images to make all this happen. 

• Creation of new sales channels

Numerous pictures of actors, models, and celebrities are published on news and entertainment websites. These images might include linked suggestions on where to purchase attire and accessories resembling the celebrities’ clothing. 

This allows eCommerce websites to open a new sales channel and draw customers to their stores; for publishers, it is a different way to monetize their websites. When you outsource to data entry experts and image annotators, they can easily accomplish your goal of higher conversion rates. 

• Hyper-personalization

By tailoring each customer’s experience with the appropriate campaigns, hyper-personalization focuses on using AI, data labeling, and image annotation to enhance online shopping for consumers and retailers. The only way to do this is through AI-driven automation because it is impossible to design marketing efforts on a wide scale individually. This way, hyper-personalization allows you to maintain increased production, efficiency, and profitability.

The challenges of image annotation and how to cope with them 

Using an image labeling tool, you can use your existing resources or hire additional staff to annotate photos. However, setting up an internal team is expensive and tough to scale. Moreover, annotating images is a laborious, lengthy, and challenging process that needs careful effort and attention to detail.

Consider the scenario where you wished to recognize cats in pictures. One must annotate thousands of cats depending on their color, breed, size, habitat, and other characteristics to create an AI-based model that can identify cats. To ensure that AI models can quickly pick up the many components of a visual dataset, data annotation experts manually attribute or tag every piece of information on photographs.

Therefore, you can always hire a specialist firm for image annotation and video annotation services as the outsourcing company is expected to provide data labeling services per your requirements. It is cost-effective to outsource image annotation, as you can quickly scale your activities according to project requirements.

Best way to perform image annotation

Here are the tips one needs to strategize to accomplish their image annotation needs:

• Establish the scope

Start by giving a precise and limited statement of the project’s business objectives, as service providers will determine the requirements for your labeled data, including annotation geometries, metadata, ontologies, and formats. 

• Consider integrating 

You should create a scalable, automated training data pipeline to continuously train your model with new data to avoid data drift—changes in the sorts of data your model encounters worldwide. Working with a data labeling partner that can scale quickly can be beneficial as the amount of training data you require grows. 

• Consider iterating 

Run a pilot after establishing the first set of specifications for your labeled data. Initially, you should label only a small portion of the data. You will find edge scenarios while iterating that would need to be further incorporated into the project requirements. Working with a data labeling partner who has tools and knowledge that span a wide range of annotation use cases and can customize the solution to meet your needs might be beneficial.

In Conclusion

Annotating images can play a significant role in enhancing your eCommerce platform. Using AI and computer vision can make your eCommerce platform more user-friendly and efficient. The precision of product identification will be improved when the annotation job is of a high caliber. With the proper integration of human and machine learning, image annotation can improve customer experience by being more adaptable to customers’ requirements and the competitive marketplace.