Augmented Reality and Retail Business

Getting in touch with the client at the very moment when he or she wants to make a purchase is more important than showing an advertising banner when a person simply checks mails or plays games. Emergence of new technologies that facilitate the interaction between sellers and buyers has led to significant changes in online and offline shopping. Thanks to the rapidly evolving AR technology, stores can establish contacts with their potential customers at any stage: when a person is at home at a computer, looks for a product on a mobile device, walks past a shop window, or considers products directly in a store.. AR has been already used by such world-known brands as Nike, Lacoste, Topshop, IKEA, Heels.com and others.

Every day a person is faced with a huge amount of information, including hundreds of products, when he needs only one. On the way to buying exactly what we are looking for, we encounter a huge number of similar goods. Because of such similarity, it is often difficult for us to describe in words what we need, especially if an image is not attached to a product. To make it easier for customers to find the right product online, Heels.com used the Augmented Reality technology for visual searching. A special app compares photos, for example, of any shoes you like on the Internet with current offers of the store.

In this example, you can see that the technology analyzes pixels in the image and compares these data with those that are available on the online store. Thanks to this, you will no longer have problems finding the right thing that you once saw somewhere and have just decided to purchase it.

There is a variety of similar apps designed to attract potential customers.

AR-based AR-based applications enable customers to evaluate how different products will look on them (e.g., shoes, clothes, jewelry) or in their apartment (furniture, interior details).

To date, there is already a huge number of similar applications, programs and devices with Augmented Reality technology. In the nearest future, experts predict a real boom of AR technologies in various industries. Thus, until 2020, more than 200 million people will use AR apps on their gadgets to search for various products.But this is the way of individual development, which is required for serious players with large integrated marketing campaigns. However, even now, services are gaining popularity in the market, providing really cheap and relatively easy-to-use facilities for placing objects in AR.