5 Steps for Visual 3D & AR E-Commerce success
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a common saying, which is still relevant today and couldn’t be more up to date within digital commerce right now. Visual elements have always played an important role within the customer journey - yet not many know how to use the full potential of this marketing device.
Copywriter,
22.12.2020
Communicating via visual elements comes with great power: it’s the leading concept behind visual product marketing and the secret ingredient to reach a good conversion rate. To maximize the benefits this marketing strategy has to offer, it is time to step up your visual e-commerce game: here is how.
What is visual e-Commerce?
To put it in one sentence: it’s an easy way to make online shopping more exciting. Instead of text on white background, integrating visual elements can easily enhance the appearance of your website and directly improves the shopping experience of your customers.
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"Visual e-commerce" is a wide term that can stand for a lot of things: its basic concept is about implementing anything visual that enriches the customer experience and ideally leads to increasing product purchases. Its aim is to bring customers to engage with your product on an individual basis, which furthers their personal bond to the product. For this, user-generated content, videos, "out-of-the-box" product display such as 3D model visualization and other ways of product portrayal can be used.
Visual content is not new to the e-commerce market - it has always been a way to capture the customer's eye. Yet the focus was often on content, which turns out to be less effective than previously thought - imagery should be promoted to finally playing the starring role in e-commerce. Humans are highly visually perceptive, especially since the other senses are not being served while online shopping.
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To fully use the potential of visual content, improvement is needed. That is why we take it one step further. Pictures of the product are nice, but there are more possibilities to step up the game: brag with authentic user-generated products, 360° product view, 3D models, and AR product display.
It’s not only about photorealistic content either: visual communication can include the use of models, infographics, tables, drawings or diagrams, and different fonts. The shopping process is not how it used to be anymore: competition is growing by the minute. It is important to keep up in order to not be left in the past.
The Importance of visual content: From 30,000 BC until today
Humans have always been communicating in pictures. The earliest relics are up to 35,000 years old: cave paintings are the oldest record of communication. Even the earliest humans knew of the power that lays within simple pictures as a way to convey messages.
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In current times, during everyday life on the street, meaningful visual elements have a vital function: street signs or “no smoking”-symbols lead us the way and clearly state what’s allowed and what isn’t, without text or extensive use of words.
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Statistics have discovered the practicality of visuals as well: charts, plots, and tree maps make it easier to grasp the bigger picture. To communicate scientific findings and survey outcomes to a wider audience, visualizations proved themselves helpful: it’s a simple way to design content in a more accessible and understandable way.
5 Steps for e-Commerce success
The way to excel in e-commerce is to offer your customer a unique and pleasant shopping experience, that satisfies their needs and exceeds their expectations. For this, a well-running web solution and good content are merely the basis. This alone will not attract masses of customers - in order to be truly successful, we have to shift our focus.
Step 1: A digital roadmap is key
How are your customers supposed to find your product? Over advertisements? Where are those ads placed and where do they lead your potential customers? It is important to know how exactly the Buyer’s Journey looks, and what steps your clients are taking to finally arrive at their desired product.
A coherent path is important: advertising with bright and appealing ads is not much help if the customer then gets disappointed by a dull website that does not have the same spark to offer. Keep the built-up momentum - set up a digital roadmap. Write down each stop on the way and where you want to end up.
The Trouble of Retaining Attention
It is scientifically proven that humans are better at retaining things they saw than any other kind of content. When reading a text, they can only remember 20% of it, while up to 80% of visual content stays in their memory. It gets better: visuals are not only remembered more than text but are also processed 60,000 times faster.
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Step 2: Increasing e-commerce sales with 3D
Imagery has to be placed in the center of commerce. Offering a 3D view of your products speaks of quality: you’re putting your cards on the table and show your customers exactly what you’re offering. Nothing to hide, no hidden surprises.
Nowadays, multiple platforms are used to make a buying decision. Often websites don't match the excitement built up before. This is why you have to go the extra mile to satisfy your customer’s expectations or even better: exceed them. 3D visualization is the new trend of digital commerce and fits every business that sells physical products.
It is a playful way to display your product, while diminishing the advantages brick-and-mortar shops have over purely online shops. The self-explaining customer interface is accessible and gives your clients a futuristic and innovative experience.
The Roomle Solution is not only versatile, but affordable as well: making it possible for smaller businesses to benefit from the newest technologies. There are several different levels coming with variable service packages offered by Roomle.
According to Hubspot, VR and AR technologies are among the emerging visual marketing trends. Seven out of ten media planners are aiming to add AR to their marketing mix in the future. This means that VR and AR technologies are soon going to conquer the digital market which will boost 3D e-commerce sales.
Step 3: Seamless online integration
To fit visually to the other aspects of your online solution, a seamless implementation is important. Offering AR technologies but having customers leave the website to benefit from them, undoes the cause: instead of retaining your customers’ attention, it is leading them away.
Roomle’s configurator can be seamlessly integrated into every web shop system, no matter if Shopify, Shop ware, Hybris, or any other. In that way, customers can stay on your website and engage with the product, which increases their personal bond with it.
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Step 4: Benchmark product performance online
In order to keep ahead, it is a good tactic to compare your product performance regularly. Either by using internal benchmarking, where you compare your own performance to past performances, or external benchmarking, where you put your product performance in contrast to the performance of other products of similar use.
The so-called “product performance benchmarks” are the reference points used during comparison: how are the KPIs of your product in comparison to others? In that way, it is easier to understand how your product behaves relative to the industry standard. This puts things into perspective and makes you see in which areas improvement is still possible or in which ones you’re leading the market.
Step 5: Monitor conversion results
Have an overview of your results: how well are your implementations performing? Where could improvement be achieved? Success in e-commerce comes with the constant betterment of your offer. Competition is wide awake and trying their best to keep up.
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With Roomle’s 3D Visual Configurator comes an analytics tool that offers insights on a wide array of data: how long did customers stay on your website and in what ways are they using the product configurator? The data is split into variant clusters and offers country-specific characteristics, giving optimal insights into your performance.
Success is self-made
Success in e-commerce is not arbitrary: in order to be successful, one needs dedication and hard work to be fruitful. Being open to innovation and ready to go the extra mile for your customers is the first step. It is important to have a plan to follow through, so you don’t lose track: Know your goals, and follow the steps to achieve them.