Focusing on what’s next, digital entrepreneurs are transforming their physical stores into virtual realities with the help of online stores. Fulfilling physical products is no longer the only way for small businesses to cater to consumer orders. Online stores are one of the most necessary innovations in recent years, and they can boost your sales significantly. They allow you to design and sell products online without warehouses, staff, stock, or even space and inventory. You can set it up yourself on any site like Shopify or Square & even WordPress, customize it to your demand, run promotions online and start attracting buyers.
Built on advanced technologies like AR, VR, 3d modelling etc., they can deliver real-like experiences to viewers. Futuristic, intelligent features like virtual store assistant, interactive user manuals, chatbots are solving most queries and are helping exhibitors convert most attendees into potential leads.
Want to learn how to create virtual store?
If so, here we cover the virtual reality store – 4 best ideas, blueprints, costs and ROI factors.
Table of Contents
Create Virtual Store Online: 4 Best Concepts
1) Virtual try-on
Consumers are looking for ways to explore and experiment with their purchasing decisions without committing the actual purchase. Virtual try-on is one of the new technologies introduced to display products to customers, answer queries instantly, learn customer interests and supply goods for their demand.
The AR-based technology is helping retail industries in building customer loyalty and retention. As the customers purchase while browsing the e-commerce site, it encourages them to explore more new products available on the digital store.
Examples: fashion, makeup, apparel
2) Virtual try-out
In this virtual reality store model, participants can drag and place virtual items in real-world environments & analyse if the product fits into their space by size, shape and colour. The feature is advanced and so demands a high-tech like AR for service.
The main advantages of virtual try-out are
- It puts your business in front of the customers.
- Buyers get an opportunity to test everything before they buy it.
Examples: furniture, interior design products, home appliances.
3) 3D Website
3D websites define the future of e-commerce. Designed uniquely for customers, they give a more inviting experience with seamless navigation, realistic images and videos. They are expensive to create but make your website look grand and give your customers a walk-around experience.
Advantages of a 3d website – What customers can do?
- They can interact with 3d models,
- Perform multi-dimensional exploration of product & venue,
- Virtually apply customizations, and
- Build a new product altogether instantly.
Examples: composite, highly technical items.
4) Virtual reality store
In the coming era of digital stores, virtual reality store shoppers can experience and try products through VR tools. However, to create virtual store and even design a virtual store assistant, you will need qualified backend experts to perform the task.
Technology is everything that can make your company’s online store more lucrative. Your store design must be immersive, interactive and candid. Customers love captivating experiences. And AR is an excellent source to create virtual store that is high-tech and user-engaging.
Once virtual reality gets better and cheaper, the sky’s the limit for this technology!
Examples: supply & retail chains
Blueprints: 3 Ways to Create Virtual Store
1) 3D Virtual Reality Store
A 3D virtual reality store enables creating 360° product images for presentation, interaction & explaining innovations in a high-tech environment. A powerful tool that supports numerous integrations and helps exhibitors analyse audience insights through AI analytics.
Today globally, over 2 billion people are making purchases every day through a virtual reality store online. Having a 3D interactive virtual store will put you in competition with some of the biggest giants in this market, like Amazon and Alibaba.
Get ready for some more information.
To create virtual store, you don’t need hefty equipment and technicians. Modern 3D technology helps you create virtual store instantly using images from your laptop or mobile device and adding some cool features. The virtual store assistant feature enhances the experience by creating the best audience engagement, resolving queries instantly, guiding the audience through the virtual store and helps them make better purchase decisions.
2) AR-powered Apps
The eCommerce revolution has begun after the origin of virtual stores where users can purchase items from digital shelves without even moving a finger. AR app helps you create 3d models for your products instantly. The best displays and experiences are created by overlaying products in the real-world environment.
Jenn Nguyen Senior Project Engineer – Point Source reviews. “The ROI is high because it’s a new channel,” Nguyen told CNBC.
Have someone on venue that is new to your brand? With AR, you can help your audience learn about the product, explore more stuff and make better purchase decisions instantly with the help of a virtual store assistant.
With a proliferation of devices – from smartphones to tablets – and newer versions of the Android OS, Google is also now developing AR for business strategies. With AR, you are not just creating a virtual store but, you are creating the best “live” store.
Best Features of AR-powered Virtual Reality Store
- 3D assets creation
- Virtual background making
- Motion tracking
- Lightning estimation
- Chatbot integration
- Virtual store assistant
3) Create Virtual Store: Virtual Meetings Website
Virtual reality technology is still advancing. It will be beneficial for businesses if they can use websites to simulate virtual shopping.
Before creating a virtual store, it is necessary to create a virtual meetings website first. Then we can add & integrate infinite items such as virtual meeting rooms, conference halls, expos, art galleries, fairs and 3d product demos into the website.
Here are the 6 great features that you can get on a virtual meetings website.
- Video calling app integration.
- Self-managed consultation appointment (virtual store assistant/live).
- Buyer’s queue.
- Video call recording.
- Pop-ups with product recommendations.
- Pay-by-link technology.
3D Online Store Execution Specifications
- One of the challenges with developing an eCommerce AR app is that the 3D models need to be created at high quality. And that can be achieved best with 3D modellers as 360-degree product images can’t produce the expected level of detail.
- 3D modelling delivers the best value when the products are well analysed, and attributes are perfectly identified. Some crucial factors to consider are size, texture, colour, and other minor details.
- 3D models are complex. They take a high loading time which leads to slower website performance. The risk is high esp. for the mobile experience. To avoid this – optimization of 3D modellers is suggested. Reducing the number of model planes on 3D modellers minimizes the effect.
- Immersive virtual objects will be realistic if an augmented reality app can create depth maps. These can be created with the help of a depth-from-motion algorithm.
COST AND ROI FACTORS
Still unable to make up your mind whether investing in a virtual store is the best thing for you or not?
Let’s try to identify some costs and benefits!
It’s simple! If you can practically organize your virtual store and work out the best idea for your digital marketing strategy, you can achieve better ROI in lesser time.
Not to forget, there will be infinite ways to host a virtual store. And every experience comes with a cost. Added marketing gives the virtual reality store a boost delivering great ROI apart from a virtual store assistant.
The most cost-intensive component is the production of high-quality 3D models for the AR experience. For example, the cost of one 3d automobile modelling starts at $5K.
So, planning effective marketing strategies is essential to bring back returns higher than the investment.
Here are a few best means to gain ROI from a virtual reality store or on a website
- Social promotions
- Online marketing channels.
- Virtual store assistant.
- Referral marketing.
- Influencer marketing.
- Ad campaigns & marketing
- Video marketing