Augmented Reality Strategy for Online Retail Brands to Adopt in 2021

Today whether you're shopping for a couch, a pair of sneakers, sunglasses or lipstick, there's an abundance of augmented reality-powered experiences everywhere- and for good reason. According to the most recent data from Shopify, AR increases conversion rates by XX% and 73% of mobile users are highly satisfied with AR shopping.

The market trend is clear and consumers have spoken. Augmented reality is here to stay and continue to shape the next stage of eCommerce evolution. So how do you as an online retail brand leverage and introduce AR in a way that leaves a positive impact on your online sales and bottom lines?

Let's have a look at the strategic decisions that retailers should be taking in 2021 to drive meaningful results.

Augmented Reality Strategy for Online Retail Brands

Extracting value and significant impact from AR largely depends on the category of products you're selling and the consumer segment you're selling to.

1. Start with a use case that serves your product category

Irrespective of getting standard expectations like free delivery and flexible return policies, when buying any product consumers ultimately want to feel confident about their purchases. Delivered correctly, augmented reality is perfectly positioned to drive buying confidence- whether through immersive virtual try-ons or see-it-your-room (or spatial) purchase experiences.

As a brand, you need to consider which experience your product category is best suited for- one which amplifies product attributes and addresses critical buying hesitations. On the other hand, if your products ranges across different categories, you want to choose one or two where the impact on your business will be maximum.

Furniture, home and bath appliances: One of the first and fastest adopters of augmented reality shopping, furniture and home good brands stand to gain a lot by implementing AR(link to furniture article). See-it-in-your-room or Spatial AR is the common standard for these product categories and have quickly become something online shoppers are expecting, especially from all furniture brands. Why? It addresses key buying questions around size, colour, texture and how an item would ultimately fit and look in their space.

‍Eyewear, shoes, jewelry and makeup: For these categories, getting customers to imagine how a product would look on them is a critical dealbreaker in the buying process. Here, virtual try-ons empower them to try-before-buying online, leaving no room for guesswork and subsequently boosting purchase decisions.

2. Choosing the right AR solution

As a brand, the AR partner you choose can make or break how you adopt and introduce AR in your shopping experience. That said, the key thing to understand before picking an AR partner is the foundation of all augmented reality experiences- 3D assets. Whether you want to deploy try-ons or see-it-in-your-room you need to have 3D product assets which are essentially created in 3 ways- photogrammetry, 3D scanning and 3D modelling.

Most AR solutions in the market need you to have 3D versions or files of your products. On the other hand, there are also a handful of solutions that can digitize or create 3D files for you.

‍Here at Designhubz, we've chosen the best of both worlds to help brands smoothly overcome this challenge.

As an end-to-end solution, Designhubz starts by digitizing your physical inventory into 3D and AR-ready assets. For this, we offer 3 different digitization methods-

1. Instantly digitizing your actual physical products into 3D and AR ready assets with our proprietary rigs which scan your products across 360 degrees.

2. By converting HD product images into 3D and AR ready files

3. If you already have existing 3D files which is typically the case for automobile and furniture brands,  you simply need to upload them into your account and the rest is automatically done by our state-of-the-art AR algorithm.

All 3D and AR experiences created on Designhubz are web based and can be easily shared and embedded across your website, app or even social media channels for shoppers to interact with in real time.

Doesn't get better than this, does it?
‍Schedule a demo here and our product XR specialists will walk you through how your brand can leverage Designhubz today.

3. Monitor the impact of AR on your current metrics

What is our current conversion rate? What is the current breakup of our sales across products? What is the return rate? These are all questions you should have answers to before deploying AR.

Once deployed, ideally you should compare these metrics over a 3 month period to analyse the real-world impact on your bottom lines. Did these metrics improve? What is the percentage of people who interacted with AR on my website or app that bought our products? Did my customer experience improve? Are my shoppers saying anything about our brands AR experience on social? You can learn more about the metrics you should track to understand the impact of AR shopping here.

Bottom Line

AR stands to be one of the most powerful technologies at the disposal of brands today which is why most brands from IKEA, Sephora and Gucci to Warby Parker, GAP, Adidas and more are leveraging it.

If you represent an online brand that is keen on holding and increasing your consumer's wallet share, you want to consider AR today.

Explore 3D & AR visualizations for your ecommerce website or app.

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