By Joey Ricard - April 15, 2021
Extended reality is changing the eCommerce experience. And eCommerce companies and marketers need to adapt it ASAP!
Attracting customers to their online stores and keeping them engaged for a long time has always been the Holy Grail for online retailers. And now incorporating the extended reality like augmented reality in eCommerce is believed to be the key to achieve this Holy Grail (Unless you’re Indiana Jones, LOL!).
Because these techs are causing a breakthrough in the eCommerce industry and are transforming the way businesses function, interact with customers, and think about marketing their brand. And guess what, more and more customers are in love with this transformation.
To know how exactly these immersive technologies aka extended reality are revolutionizing the eCommerce industry, read on.
Image Source: Forbes
Extended reality or XR is an umbrella term that encloses Augmented Reality or AR, Virtual Reality or VR, Mixed Reality of MR, and other immersive technologies that are yet to be created.
These technologies are not something that was created yesterday. Rather, they have been around longer than even the iPhones or Social Media. It’s only that they were not ready as they are now for the mass consumer market. Now, these techs are being incorporated into various industries. eCommerce being one of them, a huge transformation is pretty obvious.
But before we jump into the transformation part, let’s have a clear idea about the immersive techs to better understand how they are revolutionizing the world of online commerce.
Image Source: Stambol
The AR technology adds layers of digital objects and information on top of our real physical world. The objective of AR is to enhance the real-world experience with virtual details such as text, animation, and images.
Example: Ever experimented with Snapchat filters? Or, tried to catch a wild Pokemon on Pokemon Go? Or, tried the IKEA app to test how a decor item will look in your bedroom in real-time? Or, at least clicked a picture to get more info about it? If yes, then you’ve already experienced the use of AR technology.
VR technology refers to a digital space that a user usually experiences through a head-mounted display. The objective of this tech is to fully immerse the users in a simulated virtual environment and enable them to interact with the 3D digital environment.
Virtual reality provides a feeling of being physically and mentally present in a software-generated digital world.
Example: From the tech world to the healthcare, military, sports, education, mental care, fashion, recruitment, tourism, etc. the use of VR is growing in diverse industries. VR is no longer just limited to the gaming industry. It is believed that within a few more years, this technology will become more accessible for improving training, learning, building designs, and other experiences.
Image Source: Medium
Just as the name suggests Mixed Reality merges the real world with the digital and makes them co-exist to produce new visualizations and environments. Compared to other immersive techs, this one is the latest and is also known as hybrid reality.
To witness MR, an MR headset is needed that has a lot more processing power than AR or VR.
Example: Microsoft’s Hololens is the perfect example of MR technology using which users can place a digital object in their room, spin it around and interact with it every way possible.
According to recent stats, 78.65% of online shoppers abandon the carts right before completing their purchase. Do you know why?
Because businesses fail to persuade them to take the next step of making the payment and completing their purchase. But the emerging immersive techs like AR, VR, and MR have the potential to attract, engage and convert the users.
With several major investments being made to integrate the extended reality into the eCommerce market, we can say that in the coming years these techs will reshape the online retail world beyond imagination.
Some of the notable transformations that are being made by the extended reality are as follows.
The efficiency and comfort that eCommerce provides is the reason why online shopping is getting popular day by day. And what if we tell you that extended reality is enhancing this convenience of online shopping even more?
Yes, be it the retailers or the consumers, the extended reality is cutting down the time spent on searching for a particular product as well as making payments.
Thanks to these immersive techs that accomplishing a host of tasks in lesser time frames is now possible. Providing virtual landscapes, the extended reality is offering a first-hand experience of all the eCommerce facilities and features, that too in real-time.
Allowing retailers to create virtual showrooms or virtual stores is one of the biggest ways of how virtual reality technology may benefit eCommerce business.
To grow a business, launching its new products is pretty obvious. But that is not enough. You need to create brand awareness and learn to engage the audience to actually sell your products through branding.
Well, one of the benefits of extended reality is that it’s making it possible to come with new forms of advertising techniques that can better enhance the brand awareness of a company to a wider audience. Yes, from giant companies to small startups, more and more businesses are opting for customer engagement through virtual experiences.
Extended reality is now helping online retailers to
The immersive experience i.e.the capability of stimulating real life is probably the biggest benefit that extended reality has to offer to the eCommerce industry. Technologies like AR and VR have long been acknowledged for their contribution to gaming.
But integrating these same techs in the eCommerce industry can offer such an immersive experience that was truly outstanding.
Extended reality has made it possible for eCommerce retailers to offer their users real-life interfaces, through which they can try products virtually.
Even people with any kind of physical limitation also can easily access all the features and capabilities offered by VR eCommerce websites due to their real-life simulation feature. As a result of which more customers will be drawn to the sales funnel leading to higher conversions.
Besides the convenience and brand awareness that extended reality is offering to eCommerce, it also helps with cutting down the customer cost. Wondering how?
Well, thanks to the virtual reality shopping online experience, customers can now try a product before buying it and regretting later that it was not a perfect match.
The “Try before you buy” concept came to light due to extended reality and is now letting customers visualize the product of their choice to determine whether they are looking for this product to buy or not.
Customers can now just be in their homes with their AR headsets on to make more informed purchase decisions. Yes, being able to see the product the way they want to see it, in the space they want the products to be, customers don’t need to travel all the way to a store to do the same.
Traditionally, people used to go to physical stores to experience and try products. But now, they are switching to online stores over traditional brick-and-mortar ones. However, their requirement of being able to experience the products is still the same.
And that’s where AR and VR come in. These futuristic technologies are enabling online retailers to create virtual showrooms where customers can experience the products, without leaving the comfort of their homes, just like they would do in a physical store.
Shopping is known to be a fun activity. Consider it one of the major benefits of AR in eCommerce that it lets the users enjoy shopping the same way they would in a physical store, minus the waiting in never-ending lines and inventory costs.
Replicating the same ‘fun’ feeling of traditional shopping methods, extended reality has made it possible to try out products without having to go to an actual physical shop and wait in front of the trial room for your time to come.
Extended reality is also helping eCommerce sites to attract more customers and increase engagement rates.
Yes, studies show that while 40% of customers are ready to pay more for a product if they can experience it through Augmented Reality; without AR the average mobile conversion rate that is usually 3.5% increases to 11% with AR.
Therefore, in addition to attracting customers and keeping them longer on eCommerce sites, extended reality can actually boost sales as well.
This is because extended reality simply gives the users more information and visualization ability than just texts and 2D static images. From letting the consumers see how a product will look in their space, offering them the 3D views of a product, the extended reality is making the purchase decision easier for the consumers, which is helping businesses to drive more sales.
eCommerce is one such beast that evolves constantly. Those who want to harness the power it possesses, need to keep their fingers on its pulse.
To grow and rise in the eCommerce market, your business needs to adopt the latest technologies that are influencing and driving the online shopping experience.
With extended realities making inroads to eCommerce; to ensure maximum customer satisfaction and efficient sales process, you must integrate AR, VR, and mixed reality in eCommerce businesses.
And we, at Klizo Solutions, are here to help you to do so.
We aim to help your business thrive in this new era of tech-based online eCommerce. Therefore, by incorporating these advanced and immersive techs into your daily customer service offerings, we ensure that you can offer a more satisfying, intuitive, and friendly shopping experience to your customers.
Connect with us today and let us make sure you stay ahead of the curve no matter how much the eCommerce industry changes!
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Joey Ricard
Klizo Solutions was founded by Joseph Ricard, a serial entrepreneur from America who has spent over ten years working in India, developing innovative tech solutions, building good teams, and admirable processes. And today, he has a team of over 50 super-talented people with him and various high-level technologies developed in multiple frameworks to his credit.
