Constructing a Retail Metaverse With AR VR Tech

Retail Metaverse And AR VR Tech

The COVID-19 pandemic has given retailers the opportunity to witness the value that Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality services can furnish with examples such as Walmart, Ikea, Alibaba, Amazon, and more. Giving consumers the capability to visualize products and commodities in their own homes has become a lifeline during these unprecedented times of lockdown. eCommerce companies such as furniture and cosmetics e-retailers are benefitting the most from these neoteric innovations. Altogether, AR and VR tech has paved the way for the construction of an immersive metaverse where retailers can garner massive user engagement and deliver next-gen shopping experiences to their customers. 

Retail Experiences and Use Cases of Digital Shopping in The Metaverse

With the proliferation of eCommerce and metaverse development services, forward-thinking retailers have already started to deploy immersive 3D experiences for their consumers. These engaging experiences enable them to try on new items, explore and navigate through virtual showrooms, and get a 360-degree view of products that they intend to purchase.

According to The Digital Life Index, approximately 59% of customers prefer to purchase shoes, clothing, and accessories online. Furthermore, customer behavior also proves why eCommerce businesses and retailers need to implement metaverse into their working practices seriously. Data from Google Research signals that 66% of users say that they are interested in using augmented reality for assistance while shopping. Shopify, on the other hand, also revealed that interactions with products having 3D or AR/VR content showed a massive 94% higher conversion rate as compared to those without it. 

Therefore, it is vital for brands to stay ahead of the latest trends and metaverse development solutions in order to provide a cutting-edge and competitive advantage to their customers. 

Nevertheless, some retailers and eCommerce businesses are already making their mark, amplifying their connection with more than half of the digitally-active customers expecting brands and retail companies to deliver immersive and more online experiences. 

As far as the use cases of retail and metaverse are concerned, there are many mega-brands that have already jumped on the next-generation bandwagon of innovation and digital transformation. For instance, luxury brand Balenciaga teamed up with online video game Fortnite to launch their latest Balenciaga Fit assortment for their players. In the game’s community hub, users can upgrade their character uniforms in the virtual yet real-life-inspired Balenciaga store. Moreover, Dolce & Gabbana sold their first-ever Non-Fungible Token or NFT, Collezioni Genesi, a virtual/physical nine-piece collection gathering nearly $5.7 million in digital assets. 

When it comes to retailers experimenting with loyalty programs, they are essentially building online communities in the metaverse to maintain and boost brand awareness and customer engagement. For instance, Roblox and Vans partnered to integrate skateboarding world experiences that reside indefinitely within their metaverse in order to build a constant feedback loop between its primary Gen-Z customer base. Also, Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook is taking a more familiar route, that is, it is investing in brick and mortar stores, anticipating that if you create it, customers will come.  

Retail Metaverse: An Immersive Path To Online Shopping 

Both AR and VR technology show incredible promise in empowering and pushing the eCommerce industry forward into their next incarnation, delivering more intuitive, informative, and immersive experiences to shoppers. 

Thanks to the proliferation of cost-effective headsets, creating virtual shopping experiences are becoming an increasingly viable and feasible goal for even small-sized retailers. 

As far as augmented reality is concerned, Google’s ARCore and Apple’s ARKit are fantastic ways for Android and iOS developers to get started with AR. The boon for web developers is that WebXR Device API is specified by the W3C, open-standard, and comes with a JavaScript API that makes immersive retail experiences possible in a browser.

Moreover, given that most current AR experiences are perceived via smartphones, eCommerce and retail interactions can be immensely enhanced through AR’s capabilities to build engaging mobile shopping encounters through inventive product visualization.

Also Read: Overviewing Ray-Ban Stories As New Generation Metaverse Smartglasses

The Future of Metaverse and AR/VR Tech in Retail

Metaverse enterprise services have already made inroads in the retail industry. Considering the ease of shopping, trade, and other benefits that they offer, this technology along with the capabilities of AR, VR, and 3D Remodeling is here to stay. The positive responses of the customers regarding immersive shopping experiences will only push the industry to adopt them at an enterprise level more aggressively. 

Moreover, beyond the usual avenues of online shopping and physical retail, modern customers also demand features and experiences that encourage them to buy. The days of images, text, and basic commerce experiences in a 2D browser window have indeed served global shoppers very well, however, metaverse experiences fueled with the prowess of mixed reality solutions are getting better and better with each passing day, and it is being noticed by shoppers. 

While the metaverse is the convergence of these 3D worlds constructed to furnish shared virtual and social experiences, it is the mega path that diverse industries and businesses are pursuing. Therefore, retailers need to think beyond the browser and the store window and prepare for the immersive and neoteric future that is already here.

If you are looking for metaverse development services, our in-house team of experts can assist you in devising robust and powerful strategies that lead into the realm of virtual and augmented reality. To know more about our groundbreaking digital transformation services, feel free to get in touch with us.