In this, you will find how you can use virtual and augmented reality to create an exceptional online shopping experience for your premium brand.
That will result in happier customers, word of mouth and more overall sales.
Differences between Virtual reality vs augmented reality
- Virtual reality is an immersive experience in a completely simulated environment, excluding everything in the physical “real” world.
- Augmented reality, on the other hand, doesn’t completely shut out real life — instead, it adds digital elements to a live view of the world, typically via a smartphone. AR technology is a bit more advanced than VR at this time.
- Mixed reality (MR) combines elements of both AR and VR, and Extended Reality (XR) is an umbrella term covering all technologies that enhance senses. It includes VR, MR and AR.
1. Virtual reality us cases for E-commerce
1.1 Virtual Stores
- By not only having a standard eCommerce shopping site but having a VR experience in place just like a physical store you can create an exceptional shopping experience for your customers.?
- With this option, you can enhance the perceived value that your customer gets from your product.
- Just think of the last time you visited a Louis Vuitton store, just by entering you got the feeling that these products are top of the line.?
- And that is exactly what you can do by creating a virtual store for your premium product.
1.2 Virtual Events
- Building a community around your brand is one of the best long term strategies to grow.
- This can be quite hard because of the huge competition and fast paste social media platforms.?
- Hosting a virtual event for your VIP customers or people that are interacting in a certain way with your social media can be a great opportunity to set yourself apart from other brands.
- What exactly you want to do with that virtual event, is totally up to the experience that you want to create, but there are almost no limitations of what you can do.
2. Augmented reality use cases for E-commerce
2.1 Creating an exceptional unboxing experience
- ?Google added a feature to the camera of its Pixel phones that allowed users to input AR stickers into pictures and videos.
- This means you can create videos or images with for example stormtroopers.
- Now here comes the part where you can get creatives with the unboxing experience.
- By creating such an extraordinary unboxing you give your customer a very unique feeling that they are willing to pay for.
- Just like the unboxing experience from Louis Vuitton you can create a certain feeling with this.
- Example for an AR use case
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCv1TjOnrv0
- A very simple way would be for example that on top of the box is a QR code to download your app.
- With the app, you can create for example a personalised video from your founder with a thank you message.
- But again the possibilities are basically endless.?
- This is where you can get really creative and let your customers feel they made the right choice by paying a premium for your product.?
2.2 Virtual try-on
- This is a more common use case but you also can be very creative with it.
- For example, L’Oréal Makeup created an app where you can try different makeups on yourself just with your smartphone.
- But also the more common ones such as glasses try-on or jewelry try-on are just as powerful.?
Why is a virtual try-on so important?
- Because people when shopping online want to know what this is gonna look like on them and not on a random model.
2.3 Virtual placement
- Virtually placing furniture allows you to select anything from the store’s catalogue and see how it will look to scale anywhere in your house.
- This is an extremely helpful tool for people who are wondering if a certain piece of furniture will fit in a tight space, or if the colour of their prospective purchase will match the motif of the room.
- It makes even more for high-end furniture or anything that will need to harmonize with the rest of the room.
- No one wants to buy a 4000 € couch just to find out the colour doesn’t really fit the living room.
Final words
- As these are quite new technologies be very conscious about what your customer base is.
- If your main customer base is 75+ years old that is not very tech-oriented, relying heavily on VR and AR could decrease the shopping experience for your customers.
- Before marketing the step in this direction make sure that it really makes sense for your customer base and the product that you are selling.
