From Flat Pages To Immersive Shopping: The Role Of 3D Planograms
If 2024 taught us anything, it’s that amongst weak consumer confidence and tricky economic conditions, prioritising customer experience is essential for success in retail.
At Buzz 3D, we know that the competition to capture shoppers’ attention is fiercer than ever. To survive and thrive in the year ahead, the focus needs to be on ensuring that both physical and online stores are working as hard as possible to engage customers and drive vital sales.
Too often, however, online strategies fail to fully leverage the experience that retailers have gathered from their physical stores over the years. This is evidenced by data from EY’s 2024 Future Consumer Index (FCI), which found that 32% of consumers still crave the personal service that only in-store shopping can provide.
For example, the experience of physical shopping is an immersive and engaging journey of exploration and discovery. In comparison, the online retail experience from flat 2D pages – whether in respect of actual buying activity or shopper research for shelf pre-testing – remains limited and largely devoid of excitement. Put bluntly, navigating such pages feels more like a chore.
We consistently hear from retailers that eCommerce isn’t the bulk of their business. Anyone who’s done a full shop online will understand why it’s painful and time-consuming in comparison to shopping in person. Presently, online retail can best be described as “functional”, without coming close to replicating the immersion of browsing and buying in a physical store.
This is a huge missed opportunity. To be fair, some have attempted to use 3D visualisation but never to replicate the in-store planogram; it’s always been an esoteric attempt to do something “different”, which shoppers generally found more troublesome than advantageous.
Consider, for instance, Samsung’s 3D Product Viewer which offers shoppers detailed 3D views of their products online, allowing them to rotate, zoom in, and inspect every detail. This “almost” gets to where we see things going, but focuses on one specific item, rather than showing that item contextually within a larger environment. Then there are 3D virtual environments like those created by Ralph Lauren, allowing customers to explore a 3D-rendered store, view products up close, and shop directly from the virtual space. Again, instead of replicating what works in-store, this goes in its own direction to provide a different experience. In our view, it’s one that still offers only a relatively limited product range, and is one that’s difficult to scale.
The common denominator is a focus on evolving online shopping from a monochrome experience into one that is immersive and interactive; engaging and exciting consumers and keeping them coming back for more.
We have long felt that a more immersive 3D shelf simulation, leveraging physical retail knowledge, is the next frontier for retail.
Do you operate in the sector? What do you think?