How 3D Imaging and Augmented Reality for Products Impacted Sales


In a generation where we strive to maximize our time and choose convenience in every situation, online shopping has become increasingly rampant among young and middle aged consumers. However, we can all agree that this innovation has a lot to improve on, particularly because its limitations can lead to disappointing purchasing experiences.

While it’s important for buyers is to get the most accurate images of the product and good explanations on why they have to buy it, it’s not always the case for many, hence the reason why e-commerce hasn’t completely overtaken personal shopping.

But things are definitely looking up for the e-commerce industry with the onset of visualization technology. Let us delve more into the effects of recent digital advancement in online retail.

The Future of 3D E-Commerce

The incorporation of visualization technology into a particularly trending industry like e-commerce is expected to modify the general public’s buying behavior. It opens the possibility of using wearable and portable devices to allow interactive 3D content, as well as augmented and virtual reality, to become a part of the online buying process.

Co-founder of the Australian visualization startup Snobal.io, Ann Nolan, tells TechRadar that 3D or VR e-commerce is already showing how it can potentially revolutionize the industry for both brands and consumers despite its slow emergence.

“The VR and AR industry is projected to be huge so if you’re in retail [or] any business, for example, workplace training, you need to be collaborating VR companies to test and explore how VR is going to impact your business or how you can leverage it to gain competitive advantage and connect with customers,” says Nolan.

Here are just some of the ways how an increasing number of businesses are using visualization technology to achieve market success:

3D Product Images

With cool 3D presentations of a particular product, you won’t have to settle for photos showing fixed perspectives of the item to gain a better understanding of its shape and form. Instead, you can freely decide which part of the item you want to see. The added interactive experience will give consumers a much easier time comparing items and, ultimately, more confidence in online shopping.

Nowadays, creating 3D images of small products can easily be made possible with a device like Matter and Form’s 3D Desktop Scanner. It can produce amazing 3D images that you can manually rotate with your mouse, as you can see here.

Products in AR

Augmented reality has been widely used in games where the player gets real-time views and still get to interact with virtual, computer-generated objects. Now that the e-commerce industry has started tapping into computer vision technology, a few brands have already tried using it to boost retail and sales.

Using AR glasses or smartphones, consumers are able to get a better visualization of how particular products might look in their home, when held, or even when worn. This results to a more enriched and engaging buying experience, plus the impressive tech helps in winning over customers!

World-renowned brands and companies that are now actively using AR for their products include Lego, which has started putting up AR-enabled kiosks that can scan Lego kits to show 3D images of its finished product. Since 2013, IKEA has also been using an AR catalog app to allow potential buyers to visualize how different pieces of furniture would fit and look in their own homes, using only a photo of their interior living space. Converse has increased their sales further after letting customers “try on” sneakers by pointing their smartphone camera (with the AR-enabled Sampler app) towards your foot.

Augmented reality is obviously one of the best ways that retailers can widen their audience, connect with their customers, and help them have a more meaningful (and exciting!) shopping experience.

VR Websites

Bigtime e-commerce platforms like Shopify, X-Cart, and eBay are said to be looking into utilizing VR in online retail as well as WebVR technology for the development of high-tech websites that can be optimized for VR glasses and helmets. We can just imagine how much more interactive websites can be when virtual reality is used for website navigation or for providing a more in-depth yet understandable demonstration of what the brand has to offer to their consumers all around the world.

Conclusion

As you can see, 3D and augmented reality technology are pushing the boundaries of every retailer’s marketing potential. With customers becoming increasingly tech savvy and brands becoming more competitive, it’s imperative that businesses start embracing this new technology and consider integrating AR into their plan in order to stay relevant and for it to positively affect their sales.


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