What’s next for product experiences?

Imagine interactively experiencing a product you’re interested in; knowing exactly what it looks like from all sides, to fully appreciate its design, playing with how it works, understanding what its features are, even the difference between other models – all without ever leaving your home.

Perhaps in the store, you have had the problem that a specific product was unexpectedly out of stock. Or maybe at a tradeshow, you would like to experience a brand’s products but it just is not physically there, maybe because it is logistically impossible or because the product has not actually been created yet. 

Power of visuals

The value of using visuals on e-commerce pages has been long known and widely practiced. E-commerce website Etsy found that the inclusion of product images and their quality is the most important factor in the customer’s decision process, above, for example, the cost of the item and customer reviews. On top of that, the usage of videos on landing pages can increase conversion rates by more than 80%.

 

These types of visuals already partly bridge the gap between offline and online customer experiences, but there is a lot more that can be done in today’s world. Besides sight, the other senses like touch and sound are also of significant influence in the customer’s buying behaviour. Creating interactive product experiences can further bridge the gap between the online and offline commercial worlds, bring the other senses to live, and even offer extra value than brick-and-mortar stores usually can. Plus, who wants to watch a long video that takes you through each and every feature and benefit? With an interactive experience you decide what you see and in which order.

Case in point

Interactive product experiences can be anything from a tool that allows customers to personalize their products, to 360-views of products, to product descriptions of models, or all of the above. An experiment conducted by Golfsmith.com already showed that something as simple as the first one, implementing 360-views of products, can already increase sales by at least 10% – and often even up to 40%.

Many other impressive examples of engaging product pages have followed. Bellroy’s  Slim Your Wallet is an example where the customer engages directly via product simulation. For products with complex product features, Schneider Electric is a good example in using 3D models for the customer to interactively be in charge in finding out details of the product.

X-factor

In addition to the fact that this kind of unique technology, is easy on the eyes and add a certain X-factor to e-commerce pages, there are many other benefits it can have. Interactive tools can offer a creative way of differentiating a company from its competitors – especially when many e-commerce sites tend to overlap in almost all of the page features.

The engaging customer experience will make the customer’s time on the website more enjoyable and increases the attention span. Lastly, a customer well informed of the looks and functions of a product is less likely to be disappointed upon the arrival of his or her purchase (which will also result in lesser product returns).

Sink or innovate

With the current pace of new technology and ideas surrounding ecommerce landing pages, the question ”what’s next?” arises. As always, there is room to improve. The key is understanding your customers and figuring out the most pleasant, informative and even fun way of presenting your product to them. As we’ve seen above, rich, interactive content can help educate, engage and convert online consumers. If implemented well, it can be a great deal more engaging than simple photography or product videos. It is an expression of changing times and those who embrace and adapt will lead.

Talk to us

In our next blog post in this series we will take a deep dive into an example of one of our immersive product experiences, to draw insights and learnings and to see how it fared against traditional ecommerce copy and photography. To continue the conversation online and learn more about making all products playable digitally, please follow us on Twitter @INDG