Changelog

September 2024

Lately we’ve been busy behind the scenes working on several integrations with Field Agent, but we’ve also been cooking up some cool new features! The first of these is Visual search, an exciting addition that’s now live in our mobile app.

Visual search builds on our previously released in-app camera functionality, and allows you to quickly scan whatever shelf or display you're looking at to find similarities in our database. Just select it from the menu of the Shelfgram app, point your camera, and let our AI show you any relevant photos.

Whether you want to see where else that new packaging you've just spotted has rolled out, or need to check if a display issue is isolated or widespread, Visual Search gives you real-time insights across multiple locations, helping you spot trends and issues faster than ever.

You can learn more here. Happy store checking!

August 2024

This month, we've been hard at work behind the scenes with Field Agent, optimizing the way our platforms integrate. We've been focusing on streamlining our technologies, ensuring they work together even more seamlessly so that we can deliver a greater scope of retail insights. With this foundational work nearly complete, we're shifting back into build mode. 🛠️

In the background, we've also been working together to build out our roadmap as a combined entity. This plan focuses on expanding our AI capabilities and improving the tools you rely on every day. Expect to see early versions of these updates in the coming months, with an emphasis on smarter, faster ways to work with your in-store data!

July 2024

This month, we’re continuing our push to make the mobile app even better with new features and performance enhancements. Our goal is to reach full feature parity with our web platform while also introducing mobile-specific tools to streamline your in-store workflow.

We’re excited to announce the addition of an in-app camera. You can now capture and upload photos during your store checks without needing to use a separate camera app or cluttering up your camera roll. From the upload tab, just tap the capture button, check in to the retailer you're visiting, and start snapping pictures!

We’re also working on additional camera-related features that will further enhance your ability to capture, organize, and analyze in-store visuals. Stay tuned for updates on these exciting new tools.

June 2024

We are thrilled to announce that Shelfgram has officially been acquired by Field Agent, a long-standing partner and ally in our mission to bring cutting-edge AI solutions to the retail industry. This acquisition marks an exciting new chapter in our journey, and we couldn’t be more enthusiastic about what the future holds.

Field Agent’s acquisition of Shelfgram will allow us to:

• Vertically integrate our two technologies: By merging our AI-powered retail visibility tools with Field Agent’s on-the-ground data collection capabilities, we’ll be able to deliver even more comprehensive insights for CPG brands and retailers.

• Expand data collection across more retailers and categories: This will enhance our ability to collect and analyze data on a larger scale, helping our clients close visibility gaps and optimize their in-store strategies.

We’ve always shared a strong relationship with Field Agent, and this acquisition solidifies our shared vision of harnessing technology to drive innovation in retail.

To read more about the acquisition, you can check out the full press release here.

May 2024

Our May focus was our new Stock levels feature, now in beta. This tool analyzes main section photos, isolates the store’s floor and ceiling, and identifies in stock areas as well as voids in shelf space. This enables us to provide consistent metrics across all photos and offer accurate estimates of shelf availability at scale.

Much like Heatmaps, Text Search and Time Travel, Stock levels operates as an AI lens that can be accessed in the viewer. You can turn the overlay on or off from the sidebar where available and visualize out-of-stock shelf space in real-time. You can also toggle it across an entire Planogram at once, allowing you to compare how certain categories or retailers are faring in relation to others.

This feature is currently available in select categories, but we're expanding coverage rapidly.

Shelfgram for Students:

We are excited to launch a new, free program called Shelfgram for Students. Students and educators can now access our platform by signing in with their college or university email. Although the student plan does not include category-level data subscriptions or all premium features, students will have unlimited access to all public photos.

Dashboard:

For users managing a large number of subscriptions across different countries, we've updated our dashboard. Subscriptions are now organized by country, rather than strictly alphabetically, making it easier and faster to find what you're looking for.

Partners & Integrations:

Over the last couple months, we've gotten a lot of questions from customers asking if there's a way they can bring on their partners (e.g. brokers, agencies, etc). At the same time, those companies have been asking us how they can best work with us. Our Partners & Integrations is a new part of our platform that we're looking to grow as a marketplace. This page showcases our integrations with certified, leading industry partners. From here, you can get in touch with new partners to extend your capabilities, or connect existing partners with your Shelfgram space. These integrations are a great way to consolidate your photos and insights into a single platform, ensuring everyone across your operation is on the same page. If you have a partner that you think would be a great fit, connect us with them!

Mobile App:

• v1 of Price checks has been added to mobile. Right now it's a searchable feed of All other retail formats, but we'll be continuing to add more of the functionality of its web app counterpart.

• The header of the app's home screen now features a single Private space button, indicating the name of the company space a user is currently in and allowing them to view their subscriptions. We previously also displayed the Shelfgram logo and a menu icon there, which we've removed to reduce clutter.

Other updates:

• Shelfgram is now a Linkedin skill! We've updated our Linkedin product page, and with that comes a nice new + Add as skill button that lets you highlight your Shelfgram mastery on your profile as part of your toolkit. Find it here and make your colleagues jealous!

April 2024

This month, our focus has been on improving the core experience of our mobile app. We've completely revamped the photo upload process, making it smoother and more intuitive. Some key updates include a clearer retailer selection flow, a more visual upload progress screen, and a better integration with our tagging AI - meaning photos are now tagged immediately upon upload.

In our ongoing efforts to achieve feature parity with our web app, we have brought Multi-select over to mobile. This new capability allows you to easily manage and share multiple photos simultaneously - perfect for quickly adding images to collections or send them to colleagues.

We're also excited to announce the beta launch of Price Checks on mobile. Initially available for the All Other retail category, this feature lets you search and scroll through pricing data easily, with more advanced filters and tools planned for future updates.

Other updates:

• The Time Travel filter is now available in every feed, so you can easily parse through results that have historical data

• We've simplified the Heatmap download UI to be more obvious

March 2024

This month, we've made it easier than ever to dig into historical data with our newest feature: Time Travel. Searching by date and comparing planograms have been key parts of the platform for some time, but our latest addition lets you open a photo timeline with a single click, directly in the viewer. This lets you scroll through previous months and years of main section photos, so you can see the evolution of the exact same shelf - all without even leaving the window. You can see it in action here, or just head over to the app to try it out for yourself. You can also read more about it over on our Learning Center.

Customer API:

• We’ve released the first version of our Customer API - a means for developers to programmatically access our extensive photo library, making all kinds of custom integrations possible. You can dive into our API Documentation to learn more. Stay tuned for future enhancements, including pricing data access!

Search and Discovery:

• We've redesigned our filtering experience to be more intuitive, efficient, and informative. Available criteria are now more organized and some previously nested filters are now a lot more accessible. The full list of changes includes:

  • Filters are now thematically organized into Popular, Geography and Other, making it way easier to find the type of conditions you're looking for.

  • When you complete a filter condition, its row will turn green. This makes it a lot easier to spot when you've missed something.

  • There's a new Clear all button which wipes all the filter conditions.

  • We've added a new information icon that links to the Learning Center article on filtering so that you can read more about each filter type.

  • We've changed the AND button to instead be Add a filter, to make things clearer for first-time users.

  • Minor improvements made to UI for greater clarity and consistency - including a right-aligned Show Photos button and a red colour for negative filtering.

• We've revamped our dashboard to display all seasonal collections instead of just the ones that are currently running, so you can easily dive into past seasons at any time to get ahead on planning and retrospective analysis.

Other Updates:

• We've introduced a new March Madness seasonal tag!

• We added new related icon links and see more buttons to the photo viewer to make finding related content easier.

• Added an Overall pie chart to the Leaders by Retailer analytics.

• Searching for Manufacturers is now part of the Brands filter.

February 2024

This month found us focused on a particular principal: relevance. Ensuring that everyone has access to the most pertinent data, in the most efficient way.

Our team has been working hard on new features around this theme, like Similarity search - which cleverly links each photo to a stream of related content - and an all new Word cloud feature that brings forward and summarizes the most prominent on-shelf keywords in any photo feed. We've also refined our QA engine to automatically eliminate duplicate photo uploads, helping maintain the high quality of data you expect.

On top of that, we also published a new whitepaper: The Complete Guide to AI Heatmaps. In it, we break down the science behind our Heatmaps tool and highlight a number of strategies and techniques for securing shopper attention in the aisle.

Search and Discovery:

• Improved search algorithm to prioritize relevant results over exact matches (e.g. Tequila & Mezcal, the category, will now appear higher in search results than Tequila the city)

• Introduced a new feature to summarize photo feeds as word clouds, providing a novel way to visualize data. You can toggle visualizations and export to PowerPoint format to easily include Word clouds in their decks.

• Introduced similarity search so that each photo can now power its own feed of related images, boosting relevant results. You can access this by clicking "See related photos" from the "more" menu of any photo card in the feed.

• Introduced "custom views" within collections to help distinguish any existing sub-categories (e.g. "Natural section" within Cereal or Popcorn).

• Improved sorting options in feeds, including an explicit "Most relevant" selection.

• Enhanced the relevance algorithm for greater speed and accuracy.

Mobile App:

• Users can now configure the text size in the iOS version of the app for better readability.

• Planogram history is now accessible on mobile and iPad devices. You try it by clicking the "compare" button that appears under any Planogram with historical data.

• Made some improvements that reduced the apps memory usage, which in turn enhanced speed and user experience.

Other updates:

• Rolled out a new version of the Browser extension with user experience improvements and bug fixes.

• Added an admin console button to the mobile web view for easier management.

• Text search now supports comma separated values, so you can now search for multiple words or phrases simultaneously. (e.g. checkup-challenge, checkupchallenge, "checkup challenge")

• Updated our mail system to ensure transactional emails get through corporate firewalls. If you previously had trouble receiving your login code, you should notice this improvement the next time you sign in!

January 2024

To kick off 2024, we launched our Browser extension to make staying on top of your retail execution even easier. Any time you open a new tab, you're able to see your feed at a glance without needing to navigate to Shelfgram. You also get a number of quick links to jump back in to your recent activity, as well as links to your most visited non-Shelfgram sites, making it a productivity no-brainer. It's chock full of customization options too (date and clock settings, dark mode and more), so you can tailor it to suit your tastes.

Web App:

• Our login page was feeling a little out of step with the rest of our platform, so we launched a revamped version with a cleaner look and feel + some nice subtle animations.

• Rolled out various UX enhancements, including updating our dropdown menus to use consistent icons and restructuring the help menu for better organization and access to resources.

• Introduced a new card transition effect in the web app to help with the navigation experience. Previously, we found that it was easy to get lost when exiting the viewer back into a big feed of photos, so this subtle animation serves as a reference point to mark what photo you were just looking at.

• Made improvements to consistency and clarity in our web app by ensuring we were using the same types of buttons and other interface elements across different pages.

Mobile App:

• Continued our momentum with frequent updates and submissions to the App Store, incorporating numerous UI and authentication fixes and introducing a loading spinner for filter searches.

Learning Center:

• Introduced new playbooks and made small improvements to our Learning Center, including a "new" badge on any recently added articles, so you can easily stay on top of new features and strategies.

• Made improvements to shareability with an improved "sample" component for copying draft messages for emails and other use cases. Also introduced new unique metatags, so when you send an article to a colleague through your favourite messaging app, they'll see a preview image and a short description.

Other updates:

• Improved search functionality by adding logic for abbreviations, which helps make for quicker and easier country searches. (e.g. searching USA will now show results for United States of America)

• We made improvements to the speed of photo upload on both web and mobile.