Interactive 3D and AR for the furniture industry
Drive conversion with Interactive 3D & AR product experiences
Overview
Online Furniture Shopping
Shopping for furniture online
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, more and more people are not only browsing but also buying their furniture online.
In 2021, online sales of furniture and home decor products accounted for 12% of total e-commerce sales in the US [1]. Furniture has recently become one of the fastest growing sectors in terms of global online sales and is predicted to have the highest compound annual growth rate of any other ecommerce sector between 2019-2026 [2].
This unprecedented growth has encouraged furniture brands to invest more in digital marketing to attract and retain more site visitors, streamline the buyer journey, maximise consumer confidence and drive conversion rate, whilst reducing the numbers of returns.
Improving the online shopping experience
Design is not only about style and functionality. Great products create a great user experience!
This is why product presentation is often complex in the furniture industry.
Brands must showcase their product’s design, functionality and configurability, as well as enabling their customers to visualize the product in the context of their own homes, offices or interior design plan.
Furthermore, furniture brands face tough competition and have to compete not only for consumers’ attention, but for their loyalty. In a survey of 1,800 consumers from 8 different countries across the globe, 66% of participants said they would stop buying from a brand due to bad product information experience [3].
Prior to the pandemic, the predominant consumer behaviour in furniture industry was “research online, purchase off-line”. Although it is more convenient for shoppers to visit multiple online retailer websites to help them narrow down their choice, most customers wanted to see the product in person before deciding whether to buy it. This is understandable given the average price tag for furniture products and the fact that returning a product bought online can be complicated and expensive.
Now stores have re-opened, furniture brands and retailers looking to continue to convert online will need to enrich and personalize the online experience and provide customers with enough detailed product information for them to have complete confidence in their purchase.
From working with industry leaders for a number of years, we understand the common challenges that furniture brands face, whether B2C, B2B and/or D2C.
Key challenges for furniture brand marketers:
Providing high quality visuals from a large number of viewpoints
Demonstrating the key sales points and/or technical features
Displaying all color and material variations
Helping customers to explore & choose from all configuration options
Allowing customers to visualize products in their own space
And on top of all that:
Offering unique, omni-channel shopping experiences that drive sales
whilst ensuring great customer satisfaction!
How 3D and AR technology can help
3D product presentation
Furniture has become one of the faster growing e-commerce segments in recent years, largely driven by technological advancements in the industry. One of the key advancements has been the adoption of 3D and AR technologies for online product presentation.
By offering 3D product experiences, you empower your customers to explore your products from every angle and to zoom in on all the infinite details. The quality of online 3D viewers has improved to the point where customers can really get a feel for the materials, more so than they would through photos or video.
Unlike photos, realtime 3D technology turns passive shoppers into active customers by allowing them to discover products for themselves. Brands can highlight key selling points through interactive hot spots and enable customers to try out any moving parts through trigger animations.
Presenting products online using Interactive 3D builds both consumer confidence and consumer-brand engagement, which are essential for conversion and brand loyalty.
Interactive Augmented Reality
Previously furniture shoppers would have to go into a store to see products in context. Furniture and design stores usually set up a number of displays with multiple products so customers can easily get a feel for size and composition. However, they would still have to imagine what products would look like in their own space with different decor, lighting and their other furniture.
Offering customers a way of visualizing products in context and to scale is a game changer.
Consumer confidence sky-rockets when customers are able to try out a product in Augmented Reality as it gives them a clear idea of how their purchase will look in their own environment. Adding this feature to online stores can make the online shopping experience even more powerful than the traditional in-store one.
3D product configurators
The configurable nature of furniture is both a blessing and a curse for eCommerce marketers.
The wider the range of options you offer, the more choice consumers have, providing them with a greater possibility of adapting a product to their personal taste. However, allowing customers to preview all the possible options and get up to date pricing information can be challenging.
Rather than browsing through product catalogs and requiring a sales representative to help them configure their product and provide a quote, online shoppers are attracted by the convenience of being able to browse anytime, anywhere and get pricing information instantly.
Offering 3D product configurators empowers customers with the freedom to configure products online in real-time. As they select different product options, colors, materials and patterns, the interactive 3D preview updates automatically to provide a clear idea of what the product would look like, helping to build consumer confidence. The price can also be updated in real-time, according to the product options selected, helping to streamline the decision making process.
Virtual product photography
Product imagery is an essential aspect of digital marketing in the furniture industry.
However, traditional photography or even CGI workflows are no longer viable when you have a large number of SKUs.
Imagine a solution that allows you to generate images for an unlimited number of products, with an unlimited number of colorways and configurations, from an unlimited number of viewpoints, in one click of a button!
Why Emersya?
End-to-end Platform:
Publish 3D models
Create and manage digital material libraries
Easily define an unlimited number of color & material options
Manage simple configuration rules
Use generic configurator interface or create unique
customization experiences with Emersya’s API
High quality real-time rendering:
Emersya’s technology offers high-end real-time 3D rendering to bring digital product presentation to life. Advanced effects make it possible to realistically render even the more complex materials such as glass and fur, while custom sceneries and environments create the perfect lighting and mood for each product.
Streamlined asset management:
With the Emersya platform it is possible to create and manage libraries of different types of digital assets in order to work more efficiently. 3D models exported from any 3D modelling software, can be published and optimized directly on the platform. The platform supports a large range of digital material formats including AxF, U3M and Substance files.
Advanced features:
Configure online in Interactive 3D, instantly visualize in AR!
Emersya enables customers to visualize their custom product in their own space, true to size and from different perspectives, to help them make a more informed purchase.
This experience allows consumers to virtually “try before you buy”.
Create Fully Modular products online in real-time 3D!
With Emersya it is possible to create complex modular configurators that offer a simple and intuitive experience for building a custom product by drag & dropping different modular components one by one in the 3D viewer. The brand can define the rules and logic that control how the different components can be assembled and customized.
Share with distributors
Empower your distributors to generate and easily embed Interactive 3D configurators for your products into their eCommerce sites. The Emersya platform enables each distributor to choose which of your product options they wish to sell and set their own prices and generate a unique url for their customized version of your product configurator interface. The configurator can then be embedded directly in the retailer’s online product page.
Design a room in 3D with multiple products
With the room planner feature, customers can configure a whole room and visualize a number of different products together. The user-friendly experience allows customers to define the dimensions of their 3D room, then browse through an online product catalogue and drag & drop the products they like into the 3D space. This is a powerful B2B tool for architects and interior designers to visualize different product associations in real-time 3D and to get an instant understanding of their relative sizes.
Generate OFML based furniture configurators
Thanks to Emersya’s OFML importer you can publish 3D product models, populate material libraries and generate all available product configurations in seconds based on OFML data and configuration logic.
Use APIs for custom integrations
Emersya has developed APIs to enable brands to create custom user interfaces and integrate their 3D product configurator with their eCommerce, CMS and ERP systems. The API functions allow you to control all 3D viewer features from the parent web page and to listen to events happening in the 3D viewer.
Furniture Brand Case Studies
Here are some examples of Interactive 3D product configurators that our clients created using Emersya’s technology.
