It is all a little bit strange getting into the world of machine learning. Allowing computers to learn as they go and develop connections on their own!
Well let's not be scared as it can really help us as web design companies, you as website owners and your customers. It can allow us to provide an exceptional user experience which will generate more revenue. But for your customers it can make their experiences quicker, more relevant and more exciting.
Machine Learning in Web Design
There are lots of applications for machine learning in web design, especially Ecommerce. Think about all those experiences you have online that are difficult to find what you want, alternatives and ideas. Machine learning takes technology to a whole new level. It allows actions to be analysed and applied to what you do and see. By doing this your experience is more relevant and related to what you are doing at that given time.
Let's take an example. You hit an Ecommerce shop and you start looking at a red jumper. Through machine learning the website can look at your user history, can look at other peoples user history, it can take patterns and trends and then it can give you suggestions based on what it believes you want to look at next. Maybe some shoes that work with it, that you will actually like, or an alternative jumper. All this is based on user actions. In the past, and still in many situations today, alternatives on Ecommerce platforms are based on manual selections that the website owner has put in or based solely on purchase trends. Machine learning takes it to a whole new level, and there are many other applications.
Machine Learning For Image Search
Let's focus for a moment on the topic of this post. Hopefully you understand now what machine learning is but let's look at a specific application, Ecommerce search. When you go onto an Ecommerce website there may be 1000's of products. So when you search "t-shirt" you may be hit with 1000 results. But what about entering an image into the search, how would that work?
Instead of entering words you would input an image, the search could then find products that are similar or products that are likely to work well with that. But how can the website figure that out? This is the beauty of machine learning and image search. Using clever coding it can take trends, search history, user data and other information points and link it all together, to give you a relevant and useful search result. Boom, welcome to 2020.
The Future
This technology is just in its early days but over 2021 and beyond we will see more and more of this technology impact web design and Ecommerce. There are so many applications and uses for it that I can see it exploding over coming years. Especially with the increase in online shopping due to the current pandemic!
Keep your eyes peeled!
