[Featured image: Crate & Barrel Virtual Home Store, Obsess]
This article was originally published in The Interline’s 2023 DPC Report. To read other opinion pieces, exclusive editorials, and detailed profiles and interviews with key vendors, download the full DPC Report 2023 completely free of charge and ungated.
Key Takeaways:
- The use of 3D, immersive environments in retail is gaining momentum, with virtual stores promising content and context-rich shopping experiences that build upon and elevate eCommerce.
- Populating those virtual stores can be done through both existing 2D assets (flat-lay images and appropriate product photography)and CGI-rendered 3D products, making virtual stores not just a new retail channel but also a new endpoint for digital product creation.
- The addition of virtual stores to retailers’ channel mixes is delivering higher engagement and translating into increased sales – especially among younger, tech-savvy audiences.
We live in a world that is 3D. We spend nearly half of our waking hours, if not more, on the internet—which is primarily 2D. Isn’t it inevitable that this 2D medium, in which we spend most of our time, will ultimately match our ever-evolving, immersive 3D world?
Today, retail and digital leaders have already started to digitisze product assets, in order to help drive e-commerce sales. The most common use case being the ability to see products in 3D on Product Detail Pages and spin them around in 360 or view them in the physical world via augmented reality (AR). But, these experiences are still clunky. And while siloed 3D elements have proven to increase consumer purchase intent, the potential sales opportunity for brands has still not been fully unlocked.
Enter: virtual stores. Virtual stores are web-based, shoppable 3D environments that transform the traditional flat e-commerce thumbnail grid into something that is highly visual, contextual and customized to a brand’s unique story. Virtual stores contain digitiszed versions of physical products, acting as an ideal endpoint for 3D assets. A recent survey of 150 brand and retailer decision-makers confirmed that 88% of companies that have invested in virtual stores have seen increases in their total sales as a result—underlining the necessity of virtual stores in boosting 3D product sales, and thereby unleashing their full potential.
My company, Obsess, is a software platform that enables brands and retailers to create interactive virtual stores on their websites. Obsess is the most scaled virtual shopping platform in the industry, with over 300 virtual stores and experiences in categories ranging from fashion and beauty, to CPG/FMCG, grocery, home and media—with the most data in the world on how consumers behave in 3D shopping environments.
When Obsess creates a virtual store for a brand, we typically include one of two product types: 2D flat-lay images of physical products, shadowed and merchandised to mimic a 3D product, or CGI-rendered 3D products that are modeled to look exactly like their physical counterparts. There are benefits to both product types. Flat 2D images are very accessible assets that nearly all brands have for their e-commerce product listing and detail pages. 3D products take more effort to render, but they can create a more holistic-feeling virtual experience as they are typically higher resolution and they react more dynamically to lighting and shadowing.
Regardless of the product type, virtual stores are crucial for creating context around any digital asset. While 2D digital environments permit enhanced exploration of 3D products—for example, by spinning a product around, or by zooming into its components—3D digital environments provide an opportunity for immersive product and brand storytelling. Within a virtual store: a shopper can use 3D products to build and visualisze a new outfit, or understand how a product’s colors and textures look against different types of lighting.
For example: Obsess worked with Crate & Barrel this fall to launch a virtualized version of their new flagship store in New York City’s Flatiron neighborhood. The virtual store contains over 450 3D-modeled products, set within eight virtual “rooms” that each contain photorealistic 3D decor and animations. The virtual space contains interactive personalization tools that let customers visualize their own sofa and living room set or build their own bouquet using the brand’s selection of vases and botanicals. The 3D decor replicates the preserved neoclassical columns and original volcanic ash tile walls from the physical store, paying homage to the energy and dynamics of a period that inspires the brand’s aesthetic.
Likewise, virtual stores create a more dynamic environment for digital product merchandising. Through spatial analytics, these 3D environments can be optimized regularly based on real-time data. Similar to the way that retail managers in physical stores test different merchandising angles in display cases or aisle placements, virtual store managers can easily drag and drop products into different areas of a 3D environment to test for click to transaction behaviors. This process is also much more time and cost-effective than swapping out merchandise in a physical environment.
An added benefit of virtual stores is that they effectively gamify the shopping experience for 3D products. According to a survey of U.K. respondents: more than three in four people now play online games. This gaming-fluent audience of consumers expect every one of their touchpoints online to be highly visual, immersive and play-centric. Just as social media once acted as the throughline to millennials, gamified environments are now the entry point for companies to connect with Gen Z and younger audiences.
In order for brands and retailers to succeed in today’s age of shopping, they need to adopt gamification as a central point of their digital strategy. According to a recent report in partnership with Coresight Research: 68% of companies that have invested in gamified shopping have seen an increase in time spent visiting their websites and apps—underscoring the value of gamification in increasing brand engagement, relevance and memorability.
The transition from traditional 2D e-commerce platforms to engaging, immersive 3D virtual stores marks a significant evolution in the retail landscape and a pivotal moment for the display of 3D assets. As consumers increasingly seek richer, more interactive online experiences, the integration of 3D elements and gamification within virtual stores becomes an essential tactic for brands and retailers. By embracing the potential of virtual stores, companies are not only poised to increase sales—but also to create lasting connections with their audience, shaping the future of digital retail in a world where authentic, immersive content reigns supreme.
