17 Jun
Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology worth investing in if you’re an online retailer. We’re going to take a look at how VR and Augmented Reality are shaping the future of ecommerce and more importantly how you can offer a virtual reality shopping experience.
Moreover, VR is becoming increasingly important as a marketing tool for businesses. It might sound futuristic and a bit of a novelty, but VR is making quite an impact and proving itself a valuable asset, particularly in elements of marketing such as customer service and live events.
This means VR is becoming a more accessible technology that could soon gain mass market appeal, so it isn’t just a fad, VR is something that’s really taking off and should be seriously considered by online sellers.
What is VR shopping?
VR stands for virtual reality. It lets customers take their shopping experience outside of the store. It’s an extension of online shopping, though this leap allows shoppers to experience the products, not just see them.
Virtual reality in retail can be used to plan, design, research, and even enhance the customer experience. It offers several benefits when considering how to appeal to consumers’ wants and needs, especially when they’re constantly changing. VR in retail offers a competitive advantage by keeping up to date with current patterns and trends. It accomplishes all this while also creating a fun shopping experience.
Why should online sellers care about VR?
The natures of VR and ecommerce go hand in hand – they’re both essentially real-world experiences that have been digitally replicated. The two compliment each other well, which means as an eCommerce retailer you could see some major benefits in using VR as a marketing device.
In fact, many online sellers are already successfully using VR as part of their integrated marketing strategies. In an age where content is praised as one of the driving forces behind lead generation, VR is a sure-fire way of creating memorable customer experiences that really stick.
This goes a long way in cementing yourself in the minds of customers and getting people to talk about your brand. Think about it:what’s more engaging, reading a product description of a dress, or virtually trying on that dress in different colors and with different accessories? It’s a no-brainer.
Ecommerce retailers should take note: VR could redefine the shopping experience, allowing you to create immersive experiences that re-enact the physical shopping journey, but from the customer’s own home or from anywhere. This has the potential to completely change the way we shop, and online sellers should start planning for the VR revolution before they get left behind.
What are the benefits of VR for businesses?
- VR can create rich, immersive and – most importantly – memorable customer experiences. This can do wonders for conversion rates.
- It’s a social media goldmine, which is fantastic for brand awareness. VR is an experience, and a share-worthy one at that – it gets customers talking about you and sharing their experiences on social media.
- 360 degree product views. Trying something in VR is the next best thing to physically holding a product. It gives the user a much better perspective of what they’re buying as it allows them to see it from all possible angles.
- Breaking down language barriers. If a picture is worth a thousand words, VR must be worth a million. It’s much easier to demonstrate a product’s worth by showing rather than telling, and this can be extra helpful in demoing complex products, especially to someone who speaks a different language to you.
Why the web?
It can be frustrating to go to an online store only to be prompted with, “Download the mobile app!”. The same frustration can happen with VR shopping if you need to download a large app for every store you want to visit. It’s also a high barrier to entry for a merchant, since they need to worry about creating and marketing an app, and also getting it on a marketplace like Steam or Oculus Home.
That’s why WebVR is so powerful. The 3D experience lives alongside the rest of the online store, and can take advantage of all the other benefits the web provides.
For our Unite experience, we found that we didn’t need to create a custom checkout in VR because we could just use the regular Shopify checkout flow. Customers would take their headsets off after viewing the desk, so having them go through a proven and optimized checkout was better than having them fumble with the process of entering a credit card in VR.
Responsive VR
One of the first things to consider with any VR experience is the type of headset it will run on. With web-based VR, we feel that implementations should adapt to as many devices as possible, in the same way that a website needs to respond to different devices and screen resolutions. Below are examples of how we accounted for each scenario.
1. Mobile headsets
Mobile headsets like the Daydream View and GearVR natively support WebVR. These types of headsets don’t allow you to walk around with them on as they only track where your head is looking. The accompanying controller can be used as a laser pointer for basic interactions with the scene, and moving around can be done by pointing and clicking where you want to go. A Google Cardboard viewer can also be used, but the experience is limited because you don’t have a controller at all.
2. Desktop headsets
Headsets like the Vive and the Rift allow for the most immersive experiences because they track both the rotation and position of your head. Customers can walk around and fully explore a product, while being able to interact with it using a motion controller in each hand.
3. No headset
Most online shoppers don’t have VR headsets yet. The good news is that a 3D model can be interacted with, even without a headset. This functionality doesn’t need WebVR, and is supported by all major browsers.
4. Augmented reality?
You’d rather see the desk where you’ll be using it, instead of seeing it in a virtual void. While WebAR is a thing, it’s got some catching up to do with WebVR. We’re hoping Apple’s ARKit will support it sooner rather than later.
For now, AR is mostly phone-based, and while it’s intuitive and convenient, the downside is that it’s not as immersive as VR. Instead of feeling like a desk is in front of you that you can walk up to and interact with, you feel like you’re looking at a photo of a desk on your phone. That’s why we’re looking forward to handsfree AR headsets with gesture tracking to become commercially available.
Turning products into 3D
Turning products into 3D is one of the biggest barriers for getting started with this tech, and there are a few ways we see developers tackling this challenge.
1. Photogrammetry/scanning
Photogrammetry is a technique where you take a bunch of photos of an object from different angles, and then special algorithms try to piece them all together into a 3D model. The results can be great, but the process to do it properly does take a good amount of skill. Highly reflective or transparent surfaces can also throw off the results.
2. Hiring a 3D artist
3D artists can create incredibly photorealistic models of pretty much anything. For the StandDesk example at Unite, we took several photos and measurements of the desk before modelling it. The process took a couple of days to get all the variations done.
The catch with this option is that it can be an expensive endeavour to get many SKUs modelled. But for a shop that only has one main product, or a selection of a few, it should be a no-brainer given how versatile the resulting 3D model is.
3. Converting CAD files
For many products, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) files are required for the manufacturing process. These files can be very large and can contain an incredible amount of detail, making them too complex to render in real time for VR. CAD models often needs to be simplified before being converted into a real time format, which can sometimes be done automatically. While CAD files were provided to us for the standing desk, they were unfortunately only in 2D so we couldn’t use them.
An interactive shopping experience
According to a recent poll, between 70%-80% of retail customers with a smartphone are eager to use VR and AR apps on their phone to enhance the shopping experience. There are several ways in which smartphones could be utilized:
- Using AR at a furniture store to see exactly how a new couch will fit into a customer’s home
- As a visual guide for customers to select the products they want and be led to the in-store location
- Receiving and sending real time feedback regarding products from other customers
Unique in-store experiences
While there are many benefits of virtual reality and augmented reality tech on the human resources and training side of a business, it can also greatly assist the marketing and promotion of a company.
Retail stores have never been more aware of the need to provide customers with a unique experience that will bring people through the front door. A store needs to give customers a reason to visit in person as opposed to doing all their shopping online. For example:
- North Face allows customers to virtually climb the peaks of Yosemite while testing out their new outdoor gear without leaving their flagship stores. This uses VR to enhance the overall branding of the company and is also a way to craft a unique experience that aligns with their products.
- The Topshop store in London lets customers travel on a virtual water slide throughout the city, all without getting a drop of water on them. It may not seem like it has much to do with selling clothes, but it does promote their image as a fun and forward-thinking company.
Developing WebVR experiences
Tools for creating WebVR experiences are still very limited, and we tested out several before settling on one for StandDesk. The first one we considered was Sketchfab, which is essentially YouTube for 3D models: you upload a 3D model, and then embed the viewer on any webpage using a snippet of code. It even supports viewing the model in VR at the correct scale.
It’s a really simple process and the perfect solution for many use-cases, especially since there’s an API that goes along with it. It was unfortunately too limited for our desk example, as we wanted to include our own VR controls to customize the desk while having the headset on.
We also looked at using Mozilla’s excellent VR framework A-frame, and also Clara.io, but ended up using PlayCanvas because of how it sped up our workflow and gave us tons of functionality.
PlayCanvas feels a lot like Unity built for the web, but with the collaborative features of Google Docs. Any change you make to the scene or to the code is reflected on all connected clients. That sped up debugging a lot, as someone could be in VR and see the changes in real time, as someone else was tweaking the scene on their laptop.
We based our project off the PlayCanvas WebVR example, which provided us with a basic scene with support for mobile and desktop VR controls. It also showed us that it’s possible to achieve 90 frames per second (60fps for mobile) on the web.
We’re really excited to see how tools evolve to make it easier to publish immersive virtual experiences in the browser. It’d be amazing to use familiar and powerful game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, but their export to web functionality is clunky at best, and they don’t have any WebVR support yet.
How VR improves online shopping experience
VR lets customers take their shopping experience outside of the store. It’s an extension of online shopping, though this leap allows shoppers to experience the products, not just see them.
Visualising products online with an added element of personalisation lets people fully engage and invest in your business. People want to see what a product will look like in relation to quality and style before they spend their hard-earned money on it.
With over half of people suggesting that VR would change the way they shop, it seems the idea has a promising future in the world of retail. With almost six million units of VR devices expected to be sold by the end of 2019, more and more people will have access to virtual reality experiences.
That’s a sizable audience that can’t be left untapped. It gives you a USP that other competitors might be slow to adopt. It’s also likely to generate higher levels of revenue through the appeal of personalisation and efficiency. But it’s not only online shopping experiences that can benefit from virtual reality.
How can you use Virtual Reality in ecommerce?
As we’ve already mentioned, virtual reality is starting to gain more traction as a marketing tool. We’re going to look at the ways you can get the most out of VR as an eCommerce retailer, how you can offer your customer’s a virtual reality shopping experience, and how other brands are already reaping the rewards VR has to offer.
Telling your product’s story
Nothing is original anymore. There, we said it. But don’t let that put a dampener on your product – you can still make it stand out. Sure, there might be a hundred other products like it, but do they have the same emotional, engaging backstory? No they don’t. This is how you differentiate your product – by selling the story behind it.
You need to create a compelling story that appeals to your audience. Doing this will get them to engage with your brand in an emotional way, allowing you to connect with them on a much deeper level than if you were simply giving your product the hard sell.
This storytelling approach to marketing has been proven to help increase conversion rates, and VR is an excellent tool for providing a rich, immersive storytelling experience.
Improving customer service
Customer support teams can take advantage of the full 360 degree perspective that VR offers to help ease the frustration for both customers and team members. Having this kind of visual aid could help customers provide a more effective explanation of the problem, and could also work the other way, allowing the support staff to show the customer exactly what they are doing to resolve the issue.
This can also be a great learning opportunity, allowing the customer to see exactly how to fix the problem themself, reducing the likelihood of them calling again with the same issue. The approach can be applied to anything from a problem as simple as turning a router off and on again, to something more complex like reinstalling an operating system.
This makes for a much better customer experience – the customer doesn’t have to awkwardly describe the issue, and the support assistant can fix the problem quicker, so both parties are satisfied with the result.
Wrap up
Virtual Reality is part of a growing number of technologies that help solve the fundamental challenge in eCommerce: recreating the physical and emotional feeling of brick-and-mortar online.
Thanks to more cost effective solutions, like Google Cardboard, that can turn smartphones into headsets, and with the price of high-end devices like Oculus Rift gradually becoming more affordable, we can expect to see full VR begin to make more changes to the landscape of eCommerce within the next few years.