From Fighter jet displays to street chasing craze of pokemon monsters, world have experienced the application and the utilization of the augmented reality. A gradual but strong development of the technology have assimilated to multiple fields such as military, entertainment, fashion and sports. With the breakout of nintendo’s Pokemon Go, the general public have acknowledged the technology more than ever. Many have since though the possibility of how applicable are those 3 dimensional computer generated imagery popping out of phones or tablets and how would it shape in the future.
For the last calendar year, the top 5 investments related to AR in global scale stands as follows.
- Magic Leap ($502 Million)
- Unity ($400 Million)
- Finisar ($390 Million)
- Corning International ($200 Million)
- Niantic ($200 Million)
Numbers themselves are gigantic, but the future seems even more astounding. It has been already estimated that by the end of the year 2020, the revenue from AR is about to hit a mind blowing figure of $120 billion.
How does AR revolutionize E-Commerce?
Living in an era where our lifestyles are shaped and modeled by just a slight finger movement on top of a LED panel, every activity which was practiced by our civilization is now connected and carried away by internet and devices. A typical shopping experience counted hours and effort is now made by few clicks or swipes in an e commerce application. But one of the biggest drawbacks existed within the e commerce framework for a long time being was how to provide the consumer a physical structure of a purchasable item to generate a better consumer experience, just as a real store operates. In other words, the ability of shopping by realistically experiencing the actual “look and feel” of an item.
The above issue has resulted in loss and denial of vast majority of sales which were about carried off through e commerce platforms just for the simple fact of shopper’s inability to confidently evaluate the sense of using product. Role of Augmented Reality has become crucial in these grounds. Helping users visualize the products they’re considering, in the context of the physical space they’re going to be used in, which is a major boost to getting e-shoppers to feel comfortable and even enthusiastic about a potential purchase.
AR will create an opportunity to the customer to avoid the pre-purchase ambiguities and hassles. The challenge of giving the best user experience is eventually vanquished by helping consumers visualize the product in the context of the space they occupy in a space.
Current Application of AR in E-commerce.
With the growing need of the technology in vast number of devices and applications, Both Google and Apple have developed their own AR platforms. Namely ARKit: Augmented Reality for iOS and ARCore: Augmented Reality for Android
The availability of the two platforms from the most widely used Operating Systems, a high number of devices are now able to integrate the technology with mobile applications.
Some of the practical examples of the E commerce platforms using AR technology,can be shown pointing out some leading names of the industry. Ebay is currently using an AR Core powered application for B2B and C2C sales. IKEA, the Swedish furniture retail giant has also come up with an ARkit powered application to visualize furniture objects in real environment. Some of the other examples including Amazon, Banana Flame and Sephora.
What lies in the future?
With the progress obtained so far, Application of Augmented Reality has already sensed how the future should shape up in immersing the extensions of the computer graphic based software development to e-commerce experience. Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence and the concept of IOT would be the next steps in revolutionizing the e commerce operations. Extended Reality which is an amalgamation of physical and virtual worlds, allowing consumer to virtually see and as well as feel the object in a more enhanced online shopping experience. Artificial Intelligence will convert the online store options more smart and intelligent hence improving the consumer decision making.
It isn’t the end yet.
AR will define how the futuristic shopping and commercial operations should work. With the visible progression of the technology, consumers and retailers will become more interconnected and develop the internal trust and also maintains the standardization of the goods.
How LiveRoom Contributes to Revolutionize E-Commerce with AR?
LiveRoom Cloud Platform (Named as OGMO) is a product developed and solely owned by LiveRoom (PVT) Ltd which enables a user visualize any Augmented reality or Virtual Reality content by integrating it with any other third party application. This Platform consists of a viewer which provides the capability of viewing AR/VR/3D models on both Android and iOS platforms without having to install separately. This plug and play platform have an online editor which can import 3D models and link them to AR features prevailing in the platform itself. Providing interactive and highly functional user interfaces, with unique product URL a benefit gained to any user would be that it supports any client platform which runs on our OGMO end.
The prevailing OGMO platform which has capabilities to integrate with e-commerce platforms such as Shopify or Magento has been enabled by providing freely available plugins developed by LiveRoom itself. Prices are based on the subscription packages and has their own features and qualities diversified for each of them.
OGMO, being a platform which offer a more personal as well as cohesive digital experience to the online shoppers also paves a path to the vendors in pulling store traffic by increasing sales. Augmented reality has the strength to walk a long way and LiveRoom makes sure that it is applied in the novel and optimal way for a better engagement.
More Details : https://www.liveroom.xyz/en/lr_platform.html
On behalf of Team LiveRoom, witten by Durga Yasas and Umrah Musaffer
