What are the best ways to use AR to gain a competitive advantage?

1 Define your goals

Before you start developing an AR solution, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success. Do you want to increase sales, improve customer loyalty, educate your audience, or showcase your innovation? Depending on your goals, you will need to choose the right type of AR, such as marker-based, markerless, or location-based, and the right platform, such as mobile, web, or wearable. You will also need to define your key performance indicators (KPIs), such as downloads, conversions, retention, or satisfaction.

2 Know your users

Another essential step is to understand your target users and their needs, preferences, and behaviors. You need to conduct user research and testing to find out how they interact with your product or service, what problems they face, what motivates them, and what expectations they have. You also need to consider the context and environment in which they will use your AR solution, such as indoors or outdoors, noisy or quiet, bright or dark. Based on your user insights, you can design an AR experience that is relevant, useful, and enjoyable for them.

3 Optimize your content

The content of your AR solution is what will make it stand out from the competition and deliver value to your users. You need to create content that is engaging, informative, and consistent with your brand identity and message. You also need to optimize your content for performance, usability, and accessibility. This means that you need to ensure that your content is compatible with different devices and browsers, that it loads fast and smoothly, that it adapts to different screen sizes and orientations, and that it follows the best practices for AR design, such as contrast, scale, depth, and interaction.

4 Promote your solution

Once you have developed and tested your AR solution, you need to let your potential users know about it and encourage them to try it. You can use various channels and strategies to promote your solution, such as social media, email marketing, landing pages, QR codes, or influencers. You can also leverage existing platforms and networks that support AR, such as Snapchat, Facebook, or Google. You need to create a compelling and clear value proposition that highlights the benefits and features of your AR solution and how it can solve your users' problems or enhance their experience.

5 Evaluate and improve

The final step is to monitor and analyze the performance and impact of your AR solution and use the feedback and data to improve it. You need to track and measure your KPIs and compare them with your goals and benchmarks. You also need to collect and review user feedback, ratings, reviews, and suggestions. You can use various tools and methods to gather and analyze data, such as analytics platforms, surveys, interviews, or focus groups. Based on your findings, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your AR solution and make the necessary changes and updates to optimize it.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?