How Retailers can Activate Web-based 3D & AR eCommerce at Scale

Integrating 3D & AR Commerce on the Web

Immersive media is opening up new pathways for turning curious consumers into brand champions. With the release of Apple’s AR Quick Look in iOS 12, 3D products can now be previewed in AR directly from the browser without having to download an app. Why is this significant? Implementing 3D products into the consideration phase of the buying journey improves consumer confidence, which increases the likelihood of a purchase. But to deliver 3D & AR everywhere, reach needs to be extended beyond iOS. Integration needs to be quick and painless, with a scalable process for high-fidelity 3D asset creation. And of course, it all needs to be measurable. Meet Axis, a new platform for implementing immersive commerce on every device and web browser, from Vertebrae.

What do we mean by immersive commerce? Similar to the capabilities created via Quick Look, but on a much larger scale, immersive commerce is the ability for a retailer to directly embed a 3D product into an online product page. From there, a user can explore the product up close by scaling and rotating the model. If there are multiple colors and textures available, the user can apply these to the model as well. This means there is no longer a need for multiple 2D photos from various angles and in various settings.

A 3D Commerce Example

The shopper is in control of their experience with a manipulable 3D product. Instead of scrolling through flat images of a product from a limited range in controlled environments, a shopper can now examine a product from any angle at any range. Furthermore, a user can place that object in their world via AR to see firsthand what ownership of that item looks like at accurate size and scale. Since mobile shopping is the fastest growing segment in e-commerce, worth $3.2T in 2017, enabling 3D & AR ecommerce on both mobile and desktop is paramount. To tackle this feat, you need one unified platform, such as Axis. But first, let’s talk about why immersive commerce is so significant.

In 2010, Zappos reported that of their consumers, the ones who bought the biggest ticket items also had the highest returns. In other words, consumers who were willing to spend more money also wanted to be able to change their mind if the product wasn’t a good fit. This worked for Zappos consumers given the free and easy return policy. Amazon acquired Zappos in 2009 and has a similar policy on returns. While free and easy returns are not an option in all cases, providing a more thorough understanding of a product definitely is. Furthermore, in a recent survey conducted by Interactions Consumer Experience Marketing, 71% of people would shop at a retailer more if they offered AR and 72% reported purchasing additional unplanned items because of an AR experience. When it comes to consumer intent and providing a deeper product understanding, AR is in. We saw this firsthand via the increase in conversion and engagement retailer Tenth Street Hats experienced after implementing 3D & AR commerce.

Nuts & Bolts

So how does it work? Axis is an ecommerce content management system for 3D. Via Axis, we are able to create, manage, integrate, and measure 3D & AR as part of the retail purchase journey. In other words, we are the portal that delivers your digital product to the physical world. On the creation side, Axis leverages a specialized workflow and design process to ensure assets are customizable and reusable. We partner with offshore creative teams to quickly scale 3d asset creation for all skus. Once all models have been created, we import them into Axis by sku.

From Axis, merchants and other non-technical stakeholders can manage, organize, preview, and edit details for each one individually or in bulk. Integration is painless, with just a few lines of javascript. The platform works directly with Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, custom platforms, and websites – literally everywhere. Finally, interaction-based data leads to a deeper understanding of product-specific consumer sentiment to further increase on-site conversion. This means Axis increases conversion and opens the door to insights around why conversions are taking place. Finally, this information can be used to retarget consumers with the very 3D product they were considering.