Augemented Reality (What is it and how can my business use it?)

Is Augmented Reality Right for Your Business? 6 Things to Consider.

We previously posted an article entitled “What is Augmented Reality? (And What Can It Do For My Business?)”which focuses on the features and capabilities of Augmented Reality applications. We invite you to check it out, but the summary is that Augmented Reality:

• Creates a new and powerful experience
• Can be much more than a simple novelty
• Can be implemented in a huge variety of applications and budgets

Even so, it is not right for everyone. This article focuses on some things to consider when pursuing augmented reality as a potential business solution, whether it be a stand-alone application, as part of a website or ecommerce site or as a mobile application.

As always, our technology consultants are always on hand to help discuss your particular need and to help you outline a custom solution. Feel free to contact us or leave a comment if you have any questions or feedback.

1)      Can Your Customer’s Initial Experience with Your Product or Service be Enhanced?

 A product or service is generally defined as something tangible, such as anything that can be touched, seen, tasted or experienced. Yes, “experiences” are not exactly tangible, but they create a definite impact on the user. For example, museums could use augmented reality to display additional information about artworks or displays, including video and auditory information provided to users. This enhances the user’s experience, and creates a lasting impact.

 Defining the experience that your customers have when they initially discover your product can help you determine the best way to enhance that experience through augmented reality. For example, if you are the editor of a popular monthly magazine, you could potentially enhance the user experience by including an AR feature that is revealed by showing the magazine to a webcam. This could display a 3-Dimensional model of something covered in your magazine, or a video interview with a celebrity or any number of interactive augmented reality features that enhance the user experience.

The entire purpose of Augmented Reality is to enhance your users’ experience with your product or service. Could virtual and visual interaction with your product enhance your customer’s experience? If not, perhaps a different type of mobile application, or web application, could better fit your needs.

 2)      Do people like to “test” your products before buying them?

People like to make informed decisions, without being bombarded by information. A simple test drive at a car dealership will often tell a person much more about their preference for a specific vehicle more than a sales agent or information packet ever could.

Augmented Reality allows people to experience a product before purchasing it. This essentially lets people test drive products while sitting at their desk at home, and relates back to the previous question, about enhancing a customer’s initial experience. Do you find that most people need some sort of trial period before purchasing your product? Do they need to try it on, take it out of the box, see how it matches the furniture in their home, or in any other way use the product before making a purchase?

One example is clothing outlets, which could benefit from augmented reality by quickly showing how outfits will look on a perspective client without needing to try on everything. This saves the customer time and effort, reduces wear on the clothes, and lets the sales staff focus on the customers rather than on restocking the products.

Being able to see how a product looks in your home, in your driveway, on your desk, or in your life before you actually make a purchase provides a huge advantage to both you as a retailer and to the customer.

Augmented reality lets you, as a retailer, virtually place things in people’s homes before they purchase them, which can greatly increase sales by reducing uncertainty, as well as increasing customer satisfaction and the customer experience.

For web sales, this also helps increase conversion rates, as people are drawn into your site and will investigate more of your products, spend more time on the site, and feel more engaged with your company.

3)      Do You Suffer from Poor Brand Recall?

You may have great brand recognition, meaning that a good portion of your potential customers know who you are, but still suffer from poor brand recall. The term brand recall indicates the extent to which people have you at the top of their mind when considering similar brands, products or services. You can ask yourself, do your potential customers think of you as one of their top options when considering similar brands, products or services?

Augmented reality is one of many solutions that can help build brand recall, and it does this by creating a new and unique experience. For example, if someone is looking for a new shirt or blouse, they may remember the positive and novel experience that they had while shopping through an augmented reality application that was on your website. This type of application creates an experience that is especially memorable because of its uniqueness, convenience, and effectiveness.

Augmented reality applications, when done right, create a new type of experience that can help you build unaided brand recall. What brands do you think of first when someone says they need a new car, or they are hungry, or they want to buy a new pair of shoes?  Brand recall puts you at the top of people’s mind when they are looking for a product, brand or service that relates to something that you offer.

Also, smart phones, such as the iPhone™ or Android™ phones, are able to run fairly powerful augmented reality applications as well. By creating a novel experience, and literally placing it in people’s pockets, can place you as the first resource when people are looking for a product or service.

4)      Can People Order Your Product Online or by Phone?

One of the benefits of augmented reality is that people can experience your product from home or on the go. However, they also need the opportunity to purchase the item without having to go to another location. In some cases, this is unavoidable or still preferable to have customers come to the actual retail location, as in the case of brand and reputation building, or in the case of restaurants or services which are only provided at specific locations.

Some examples include advertising and promotion of upcoming products or events. For example, during the promotion of the movie Avatar, McDonalds and Coca-Cola launched AR advertising campaigns that built on the excitement and experience of Avatar in order to promote their own products. This included the ability to view and manipulate 3D objects from the Avatar movie by using special cards and a webcam.

However, in most other cases it may be preferable to directly convert that experience into sales through an ecommerce site or online store. This lets you engage the customer and provide them the opportunity to immediately make a purchase. Integrating augmented reality into ecommerce sites is a natural progression of the technology, and will become increasingly common in the near future.

It is important that you consider the impact that augmented reality applications can have on your current business and sales model, and be willing to adjust accordingly.

5)      Are You Trying to Make an Impact?

Augmented reality is still a fairly new technology that most people have yet to experience. This means that you have the opportunity to make a huge impact, and jump into the market before it becomes a common or standard marketing tool.

One benefit to powerful smartphones is that they are capable of creating a powerful augmented reality experience. This means that a mobile AR application designed to promote your business will have a higher probability of being shared with friends and family, creating a bigger buzz about your product.

Also integrating augmented reality tools into social media is emerging as a new way to increase the impact of the technology. However, it is important to note that creating a novel experience may not accomplish your sales goals by itself. Applications must also be helpful, entertaining, and able to keep an individual’s attention over a longer period of time. This separates “creating a novel experience” from “creating a lasting impact and behavior change.”

 6)      Are Your Customers Generally Tech and Web Savvy?

Although Augmented Reality is generally very intuitive and easy to use, an unfortunate truth is that it still requires a bit of tech savvy as well. This means that your potential customers must have, and be able to use, whatever hardware is required to run the software. This may be a webcam, smartphone, or other device.

This may be one of the largest deciding factors in your decision to use AR—will your customers be able to use it? It can be confusing to some users who do not have the required hardware installed, or are unfamiliar with computers in general.

But like the Internet itself, people will catch on fairly quickly, and it may be a great way to capture the target audience of early adopters and younger generations.

Augmented reality has the power to reach and engage people in ways that were not possible only a few years ago. Augmented reality can be employed in almost every industry and across a wide variety of applications and situations. We would love to help build and develop your idea into a real product that will expand you business and engage your customers. Please contact us and let us know how our experienced development team can help you succeed.