What is Augmented Reality?
In this digital world, new technologies are emerging for solving human problems, and “Augmented Reality” is one of them. After the tremendous popularity of Pokémon Go, Many industries adopted augmented reality. It is used to create artificial environments by showing computerized pictures in the real environment.
Augmented Reality (AR) is going to transform everything that is involved in this technical world and it will change our way of perceiving things.
In the E-Commerce industry, AR played a significant role in boosting the buyer shopping experience. AR overcomes the various challenges faced in E-Commerce like lower engagement rate, high returns, etc. Reports say that 32% of customers showed their interest in augmented reality while shopping and 73% of customers are satisfied with the try-on feature.
Augmented Reality Features-
- Zero confusion
- High visual power
- User visit & conversion rate booter
- Lower returns rate
- Storytelling
- High user interaction
- Personalization
How AR works?
With understanding the business concept of new technology, it’s necessary for us to know the process of how it will work. Here we will discuss how Augmented reality actually work-
It is the process of overlaying the input of the camera and virtual object information. The AR platform scans the environment through a device camera to identify a point where to overlay virtual objects using trackers/sensors. Then AR creates a realistic view with a real-time environment and virtual image.
Types of Augmented Reality –
1. Marker-based – This type of AR used to recognize the images by triggering certain computer-generated information.
2. Position based – The Position-based Augmented reality used to identify the location data based on GPS.
3. SLAM – SLAM is simultaneous localization and mapping technology which lets the system identify surrounding objects using point-based detection.
An augmented reality filled the gap between the online stores and physical store buying experience because 54% of users prefer going to physical stores as they can’t view the items properly online. We’ll look here at some E-Commerce businesses that embraced the AR.
1. Furniture E-Commerce
Furniture E-Commerce with augmented reality made the selling easy for the customer in the furniture business. Customers experience the problem in reviewing big size or expensive furniture items so here AR helps customers preview the products in their own spaces, checking whether the item is well suited with the design and the areas or not.
AR benefits the merchants/sellers to accelerate the sales of expensive and large furniture items and decrease the return rate. In the furniture E-Commerce industry, many businesses are successfully running in the market and IKEA is one of them.
Case study of IKEA
Customers can use the IKEA application to view the small to large items in real spaces such as the Living Room, kitchen, and the Guest room through the device camera. It provides a user-friendly interface to put the camera in the required space/corner and view the image there.
AR allows a quick review of any item and takes the final decision instead of Measuring the areas for placing the item, buying the item accordingly, and then checking it in real space.
IKEA faced the problem of customer experience. 14% of IKEA customers purchased the wrong products. IKEA place AR app provided a better customer experience that increased the 2.3 billion visits in a year.
2. Beauty E-Commerce
Augmented reality fits into the beauty industry and helps in making the shopping for items easy by encouraging the customer to try a variety of beauty items without going to physical outlets. The AR apps scan the face and then apply the cosmetics to the scanned face, which lets the user know he/she is really using it.
Customers become more inclined to buy the beauty products when they come to know how it looks on their face before purchasing it.
AR offers the following benefits in the beauty industry.
- No need for sample products for demonstration.
- Real-time assistance from virtual make-up experts.
- Personalization basis on the various parameters.
AR Impact on Beauty E-Commerce – Sephora is a good example of AR in beauty E-Commerce. AR raised the customer visits from 1.6 million to 45 million.
3. Fashion E-Commerce
Buying fashion items is a very popular style of shopping. When we look at the last 10 years we’ll come to know about E-Commerce fashion with a big difference.
Now the fashion industry is very advanced due to adopting new technologies and adoption of AR is one of them. 68% of users revealed the fact that they are more interested in shopping if Augmented reality technology is used at outlets or online stores. Augmented reality is powering up the sales for the fashion industry.
Virtual trial room, where customers can check out the products virtually and purchase them in less time.
4. Jewelry E-Commerce
With past studies, we came to know that jewelry business presence is not good in the market. AR solved the problem by increasing the space of the jewelry industry which is leading to amazing results.
We’ll see how AR has become a solution for the jewelry industry here.
Reliability – Jewelry is a complex and expensive product for which customers don’t feel like investing a high amount of money without trust. AR educates the customers by providing the details of product parts in 2D and 3D models to build customer trust.
Customer behavior – AR-based jewelry business helps merchants to understand their customer’s shopping behavior and provide the suggestion in real-time.
Summing up
Augmented reality is the revolution for the IT industry to overcome the challenges facing the merchants. According to the surveys, the Augmented Reality market will cover between $70 billion and $75 billion by 2023 (Stats by Vxchnge). Several businesses have already adopted and acquired the benefits of the AR.
If you haven’t embraced the AR yet then it is the right time to take the AR technology and reap the opportunities.
