Wayfair is diving deeper into digital with a duo of new consumer-facing features, Discover and Image Search. Each feature has unique components, but the common thread is imagery.

The first, Discover, opens in a dedicated tab in the Wayfair app to take shoppers into an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered experience. Wayfair says it will offer recommendations using advanced visual search technology. Ultimately, the retailer hopes it will help shoppers find what they didn’t know they needed.

With Wayfair’s Image Search, customers can upload photos of items they like to look for something similar. In return, Wayfair will search its catalog and offer items it thinks match what the customer wants.

Wayfair ranks No. 10 in the Top 2000 Database. The Top 2000 is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North American online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales. Wayfair is also the highest-ranking Housewares & Home Furnishings retailer in the Top 2000. Digital Commerce 360 projects that Wayfair’s total online sales in 2025 will reach $11.35 billion.

How Wayfair will use its Discover and Image Search features

“At Wayfair, we’re always looking for ways to remove friction and bring more joy to the shopping journey,” said Aanan Contractor, vice president of customer technology at Wayfair. “Whether you’re snapping a photo to find a product or browsing curated imagery in Discover to find inspiration, these innovations are designed to simplify the journey and bring your home vision to life — seamlessly and intuitively.”

The roll-out of two new user experience tools on the app should bolster the retailer at a time when Wayfair revenue is growing. That is taking place even as it deals with a challenging macroeconomic environment and tariff uncertainty.

Tal Lev-Ami, chief technology officer and co-founder of the media optimization and visual experience platform Cloudinary, said Wayfair is adapting to consumer behavior.

“Wayfair’s launch of Discover and Image Search is part of a broader and important evolution from keyword-driven commerce to visual-driven inspiration,” Levi-Ami said.

He added that today’s consumers are not just searching for “blue microfiber sofa” anymore, and instead, they’re inspired by a room layout, a design aesthetic or a vibe they saw trending on social media.

“By enabling users to shop via images, Wayfair is narrowing the gap between ‘inspiration’ and ‘transaction,’ signaling a very telling direction that commerce is headed,” Levi-Ami explained.

He noted that manufacturers and retailers have good reason to reinvest in their photography.

“If your product images aren’t high quality, dynamically rendered, and context-aware, then you’ll be invisible in a world of visual search and discovery,”  Levi-Ami said, noting that retailers now need tools to automatically tag, transform and optimize their media for visual AI at scale.

Role of visual search at Wayfair

Anthony Miyazaki, a professor of marketing at Florida International University, said the new features are on-brand for Wayfair. He sees the brand as being known for its visually appealing products.

“They’re a perfect fit for the company’s target markets,” he noted. “Both consumers and B2B buyers want ease-of-use, flexibility, and inspiration when shopping for furniture and décor.”

He emphasized that the image search tool reduces shopping friction because it eliminates the I-don’t-know-what-this-is-called barrier, letting shoppers easily move from visual inspiration to a variety of purchase options.

“The visual search option will nudge impulse buys by turning a fleeting visual idea, such as a vase in a coffee shop, into a shoppable reality in just a few taps,”  Miyazaki said.

Meanwhile, the Discover search features give Wayfair a vested interest in customer journeys from beginning to end.

“The Discover feature will boost long-term loyalty by owning more of the early-stage inspiration portion of the customer journey — something that previously belonged to sites like Pinterest or Instagram,” Miyazaki stated.

Still, he added that it may blur lines between browsing and buying by showing that inspiration and conversion aren’t sequential.

“They can, and perhaps should, happen in the same visual experience,” he said.

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