Back in May, as lockdown took hold and online sales soared, consumers were surveyed about their buying habits.
Interestingly, around one in ten admitted to buying more than they intended to keep. And with £5.2bn worth of goods purchased online being returned each year, this is a growing problem made worse by the constraints of a global pandemic.
Shoppers are increasingly unable (due to local lockdowns) or unwilling (due to COVID) to browse and buy in-store. Which prompts the question: How do you guard against an avalanche of returns if your customers can’t interact with your products before buying?
The answer is simple. Let your customers test-drive your product from the comfort of their home, from the comfort of their phone. An Augmented Reality (AR) Product Visualisation helps them try before they buy — without the hassle of returns.
In this post, we explain how.
AR Visualisation: The modern answer to buyer’s remorse.
If you’re not familiar with Augmented Reality, you might confuse it with Virtual Reality (VR), but it’s something different entirely.
VR requires a headset to interact with a completely virtual, computer-generated environment.
AR, meanwhile, superimposes digital information into the real-world, usually via a smartphone or tablet camera. You can then interact with the image or animation on your device, moving it around your space, zooming in and out, and editing it to match your requirements.
An AR Product Visualisation, therefore, allows you to drop a digital version of a product into your real-world space to examine it in 3D. This can be done to scale, making it especially useful when shopping for furniture.
For example, the likes of IKEA, Wayfair, and Amazon all now offer a “View In Room” AR option for furniture, helping you decide if a particular chair or bookcase will a) fit into your space and b) look good in situ. In many cases, you can even cycle through various colour and material options to find the one that works for you — further enhancing the shopping experience and minimising the possibility of buyer’s remorse.
