It happens so often that you just can’t put into words what you want to buy but you can clearly see an image. Or that you can match the color of your shirt to the color of your new handbag.
Luckily there are quite a few visual search engines to come in handy.
This post lists the coolest and the most popular of them: shopping search tools that allow to search by color!
Happy color-shopping!
1. Etsy
Etsy is the community of sellers who sell homemade products.
Color choice: Huge
Product range: Specific (only handmade)
The scenario:
- Just hover over the search field and watch the colors pop up following your mouse.
- Click on any color spot to see the product range matching the color:
The results:
Additional search options (via the new color search engine):
- Search by term;
- Select the color from color picker.
2. Like.com
Like.com is by far the most popular visual search engine for shopping. It indexes the huge variety of products and has the large range of search options.
Color choice: Large
Product range: Huge (Fashion)
The scenario:
- Search for the term first;
- Click “COLOR” in the navbar and choose one of the available color options:
The results:
Additional search options:
- Search by the price range;
- Search by brand;
- Search by material;
- Limit the search by site.
Shopping search engines with similar color search options:
- Become (color choice is huge but the search relevancy seems to be inadequate);
- Shopwiki (the category relevancy is not always precise)
- TheFind
3. Empora
Empora is the fashion search negine most women will appreciate.
Color choice: Limited
Product range: Large (Fashion)
The scenario:
- Search for the term first;
- Choose one of the color names to filter the results (if you have hard time recognizing the color names, try hovering over the color name and you will see the color preview):
The results:
More search options:
- Search by price range;
- Search by retailer.
4. Picitup Shop
Picitup Shop claims to be the “most extended product search on the web”.
Color choice: Large
Product range: Medium
The scenario:
- Search for the term first;
- Find the handbag you like most and click “Similar images”
- Filter results by colors available in the left-hand sidebar (while you are filtering products by color, the color palette is changing based on which colors you can choose from):
The results:
More search options:
- Search by brand;
- Search by material;
- Search by brand name.
View Comments
Very good selection, Kate! Every major merchant should also incorporate a "color" option into their product search function (like ShoeBuy, for example, does).
It would be really interesting to poll people to see how many of us (and how frequently) are color-shopping. Also, I wonder if the responses will differ depending on gender.
Thanks for your hard work! I'll try color-shopping.
I think that the most promising site for the Visual Shopping, not only related with color but also with texture and shape performed in automatic way is http://www.drezzy.com
This is a new site related with the fashion domain field and the engine is realized by a Computer Vision laboratory at the University of Insubria, Italy.