Augmented Reality in retail

Augmented Reality is the latest boom in technology trends to engross the retail and design community. It has shown a massive potential to boost sales and didn’t take much time to creep into business marketing across various industries.

While the production market has evolved into a complex web with ever increasing sophistication, the customers have become more demanding. Businesses are looking at new innovative ways to engage their customers and reduce the number of challenges for them.

AR has completely changed the way people shop and has helped businesses solve many of the challenges in marketing, services & retail industries.

Let’s see how:

1.Provides better user experience:

A regular product catalog contains detailed descriptions and specifications of each product. AR can bring these products to life, users can change colors, styles and sizes of their chosen products to customise them to their liking. Users can get a lot of additional information along with an almost palpable look and feel of the product compared to what they can scan physically at a store.

2.Provides a strong medium to tightly connect readers with printed content:

In the near future, printed products will adapt to the needs of AR and create a new storytelling medium. Users can benefit from an enriched experience, while companies will be able to better understand how their content performs.

Credits: IKEA Augmented Reality

LEGO and IKEA have begun making AR supported- printed catalogs already. After scanning a page, users can see how the product will look in the real world, see much more additional information and tips before making their purchase.

3.Improves customer decisions thus increasing conversions and reducing returns.

According to many studies, AR options in marketing provide a higher probability for customer purchases. A lot of customers love to preview their products before paying their money. Augmented reality applications help save their time while encouraging them to make better decisions.

For example, Virtual Fitting Room by J.C. Penney significantly improved their online conversion rates and reduced return rate of products once they integrated with AR.

3.Collects detailed analytics to understand user’s behavior, easily.

Just like any web or mobile app, AR apps provide an amazing opportunity to track and analyze data. Companies can monitor user interactions, purchase history and product views to make better products and understand user’s needs on a technologically higher degree.

We have seen an increasing trend of interest in Augmented Reality among customers, businesses and big corporations. A lot of retailers have already included AR technologies into their marketing strategies and reaping substantial benefits from it. Though the build takes a little longer and needs diverse creative knowledge, the chance is worth providing an innovative holistic experience to the users by changing the way people shop.

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