In times when online and distant shopping is evolving, virtual showrooms are becoming a necessity. The rapid growth of AR and 3D has led to many new practices that can boost e-commerce. One of them is a virtual showroom that uses these technologies to provide users with an immersive experience for their shopping. They have become a must-have for e-commerce businesses and brands with their rising popularity.
This blog discusses the growing demand for virtual showrooms and how it benefits businesses and consumers alike.
What is a virtual showroom?
Virtual Reality showrooms are nothing but digital copies or manifestations of physical showrooms. With Virtual Showroom integrated into your website, customers can experience all the features of physical showrooms and even interact with the products designed using 3D technology to maximize the similarity between the virtual and real experience.
They also provide additional features like custom product designs and interaction with products that would normally be out of reach in real-world showrooms.
What is the purpose of a VR showroom?
Let’s understand the purpose of virtual showrooms making rides in the market.
Embracing the digital trend
With as many as 63% of people beginning their shopping journey online and 80% trusting products with Augmented Reality more, going digital is an exceptional and rewarding choice for e-commerce businesses looking to grow their brand. Keeping up with the trend is of utmost importance. It ensures you optimize your strategies per market demand to stay relevant and stay ahead.
Level up sustainability
Digital showrooms contribute to elevating sustainability practices. You can replicate a physical showroom’s experiences without the obvious downsides, like high maintenance, safekeeping, and others. It can improve profits by a huge margin while promoting your business as a responsible entity aiding the world’s endeavors for a sustainable planet.
Faster go-to-market
Setting up a physical showroom upfront could be time-consuming and involve a lot of cost. You could start selling your product online via a virtual store while parallelly building a brick-and-mortar store. Faster go-to-market is always an advantage in ensuring your unique ideas get marketed at the right time when demand is higher and are not stolen or replicated.
Global Reach
With digital showrooms, brands are not limited to particular cities or countries. They can launch digital showrooms all over the world. The number of customers is a big determinant when opening a physical showroom due to the high sustaining cost. With digital showrooms, brands don’t have to worry about that and provide customers with exceptional experience in the digital showroom.
Advantages of virtual showroom over physical showroom
Some major advantages of having a digital showroom are:
No location limitation
Most physical showrooms are situated in high-density areas with expensive rents to attract more customers to their establishments. With digital showrooms, the focus shifts to advertisement and driving customers to their site or experience to access digital showrooms. People don’t have to struggle to travel down to a physical store and still make a confident buying decision.
24/7 access
Unlike physical showrooms, digital showrooms can be easily accessed at any time of the day. Customers don’t have to wait for an appointment or for a product to arrive, either. They can traverse products virtually through the day and place orders at any time.
Display all the products in a virtual setting
Unlike physical showrooms, where the number of products is limited, usually due to limited space and high price, digital showrooms have no such limitations and all the products can be interacted with and accessed within a virtual setting.
Saving time and money
Digital showrooms are a money-saving endeavor for both brands and customers. Customers don’t have to spend time and money traveling to the showrooms, while businesses don’t have to spend money upfront on building a physical store.
Businesses with the best potential for a virtual showroom
While virtual store shopping is beneficial for most e-commerce businesses, some have more uses than others.
Fashion Showroom
Fashion showrooms have the highest chances of products being ruined or damaged due to mishandling. With virtual showrooms, fashion brands can let their customers try the products while the products are in perfectly fine condition.
Furniture & Home Decor
Home decor products are difficult to ascertain even in physical showrooms, but with digital showrooms, customers can easily observe their specifications to help them make a better choice. Brands like iKEA could wow their customers with a Virtual Showroom furniture experience. The same goes for decorative lighting, wallpaper, carpets, and other decorative items.
Virtual Retail Store
Retail stores are cost-intensive and low-margin businesses. Thus, they are hard to set up and manage when it comes to physical showrooms. Online selling of retail items is booming with people preferring online delivery while shopping from the comfort of their home. It saves retail store owners from the costs incurred in building a brick-and-mortar store and the cost of renovating to compensate for wear and tear.
Car showrooms
One of the biggest beneficiaries of digital showrooms is cars and other automobiles. With their bulky size and fewer options available at most showrooms, digital showrooms are way better as they not only allow one to look at all the available models but also see the various specifications that are impossible even in the real world. You could be taking a test drive as well that feels surreal. It is as if you are present in a real showroom.
Example of a virtual showroom
Some major brands that have adopted digital showrooms are:
BMW
They launched their digital showrooms after COVID-19. It was a success, and they continued to use it. Customers are allowed to use and test the various functionalities of the vehicles virtually without any restrictions.
Ordre
This brand’s main focus is fashion Retail. Customers can view the fashion collection through a digital showroom with high-definition videos, pictures, and AR models.
Key takeaways
Digital showrooms will soon play a crucial role when more people choose to shop from the comfort of their homes. They remove various restrictions put on customers when they visit physical showrooms, making them desirable among online shoppers.
Want to build your own virtual showroom? Sign up to the PlugXR platform for all this AR and VR. Book a demo to get in touch with us!