Amazon does it, Ikea does it, Zara does it and many others have long since followed. Industry leaders have been experimenting with new visualisation options in e-commerce for a long time and they have good reasons for doing so.
Livom offers high-quality, sustainably and fairly produced modular furniture in five countries and has ventured into augmented reality in its online shop.
In this article, you can find out how Livom came to use AR for its own shop and its own goals, and how it's been going since its implementation in November 2022, and what's changed since then, here in this post.
What exactly is Augmented Commerce?
Augmented Commerce or Augmented Shopping is a special kind of shopping experience in e-commerce. Using your smartphone camera, products from a store can be placed directly in the real world. You can safely forget the awkward and cumbersome controls of first-generation VR glasses.
For example, you are standing in your new apartment and digitally place a sofa in the empty room to see how you like it. This has a huge advantage: it eliminates or minimises many challenges that online retail, despite its triumph, still faces.
Both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) offer this potential. The only difference is that with AR the product is embedded in a real space via the camera and with VR in an artificially generated space. Sandro Haag says: "AR may even creates a little more trust with the user on several levels".
How can Augmented Reality Shopping help you to support your customers?
The example of the furniture industry shows that buying furniture is a very long-term decision. Sandro Haag says: "On the one hand, the decision from the first thought or idea to the purchase sometimes takes up to three years. On the other hand, the customer wants to buy something that he or she will be happy with for years to come, which of course has to be well thought out. Appearance and design play an important role here, which is why visual support that goes beyond product images offers considerable added value for our customers' purchasing decisions."
This lowers the inhibition threshold for buying products where haptics are not necessarily the most important factor. Customers can much more easily imagine what it is like to use the product. This applies to many industries, another example being optical eyewear. Our customer Revo, for example, uses AR shopping to allow customers to try on glasses on their own face. Previously, this was seen as a barrier in e-commerce that had to be cleverly avoided.
How to make the leap to AR commerce?
To get started with your Augmented Shopping project, you need to know a few things about your products. If you have a concrete idea of how you want to present your products, then you need to create the technical requirements. With Shopify, you have access to themes that support 3D models, among other things.
Product images and 3D modelling
In order to obtain a realistic 3D model of your products, specially prepared photos are required. Different shooting angles, appropriate light, descriptive file names, detailed shots are just some of the factors that ultimately determine the quality of the 3D model. Our marketing expert on Livom's approach: "From a technical point of view, this sounds extremely complex to someone who is new to the field. That's why we took this approach together with beeclever. What we didn't want was an application that didn't run smoothly at the end of the day and frustrated rather than supported customers. Aspects such as loading times and page speed are obviously important in e-commerce. We had a third-party provider create 3D models of our products and implemented them in our online store."
The technology itself isn't new, but the areas of application and user experience are getting better and better, so that a corresponding user experience can be created. And this is exactly what you should keep in mind. The performance of your site is known to have a relatively large influence on search engine optimisation.
In summary, you should:
- have a concept of how you want to present your products using AR
- clarify the technical requirements, such as supporting themes.
- Ideally have the 3D modelling implemented by a professional third-party provider
- Make user behaviour measurable in order to identify and refine optimisation potential as quickly as possible.
Which customers use augmented reality shopping and how does it affect the customer relationship?
Roughly speaking, the target audience for AR Commerce starts with the age group that has already been exposed to AR games such as Pokémon Go or social media filters. The remaining influencing factors are industry and product specific. What can be observed, however, is that augmented commerce can increase customers' trust in an online shop and its products.
Sandro Haag confirms this: "Around 90-95 percent of the interaction with the Livom brand takes place exclusively online. We quickly realised that the ability to visualise the future piece of furniture in such a real way creates additional trust among customers. Firstly, because the whole family can get an accurate picture of how the new sofa will look in their own home. I also think that technically innovative, particularly creative and unique online shops can enjoy a trust bonus. If a brand takes on a pioneering role or goes out of its way to offer customers more than the competition, then buyers can certainly be inspired.
Looking at the classic customer journey, it is clear that the reward for customers tends to come at the end. But being able to see a product in the scenario in which it will ultimately be used, even before the purchase, is an experience. It created a sense of anticipation that is otherwise only felt when the product is actually purchased or delivered. The anticipation of such a positive moment can positively influence the purchase decision.
"If AR commerce is technically implemented cleanly and works flawlessly, it will have a positive impact on the customer experience and customer trust."
Augmented Reality Shopping - what does the future hold?
What was technically very complex a few years ago and hardly worked in practice is now theoretically available to all online shops and companies. The way Meta, Google and Apple have been working with AR and VR for some time now suggests that this is much more than a gimmick or a passing trend. The future of shopping will soon take everyone back to the shops - but this time in virtual form and enhanced by all relevant personal context.
Marketing and IT expert Sandro Haag confirms that Livom is ready: "With our current configurator, we already offer our customers a pretty good augmented shopping experience. Of course, there is still a lot to do and we are constantly working on the project. One of the milestones we want to reach this year is to have the rest of our products modelled in 3D and available in our configurator. Then it's just a matter of staying on the ball and keeping up with the technology in order to be able to continuously inspire customers.
Find out more about Augmented Reality and talk to us!