Unlocking the Power of Augmented Reality for Businesses
Akram Atallah is CEO of Identity Digital, a world leader in next-generation top-level domains and digital identity.
There’s a growing excitement surrounding augmented reality (AR) and its potential to revolutionize various industries—from entertainment, retail, and gaming to healthcare, education, and manufacturing. For those unfamiliar with AR, it’s a technology that overlays digital information onto the real-world environment through sophisticated algorithms and sensory input from camera feeds or GPS data.
What is Augmented Reality?
Unlike virtual reality (VR), which creates a totally immersive digital experience, AR enhances users’ existing environments by adding images or videos that will be experienced through smartphones, tablets, or smart glasses. It allows users to interact with digital content in real time while still being aware of their surroundings—think Pokémon Go or Snapchat filters. But it’s not limited to only social media or gaming; brands across industries are embracing AR with open arms, constructing recent types of consumer experiences and generating excitement.
The Rise of AR in Shopping
With nearly 92% of Gen Z indicating interest in AR-based shopping, it’s clear that AR is redefining customer engagement. Strategically incorporating AR into your brand’s strategy means you possibly can stay ahead of the curve, innovatively engage with customers, and create memorable interactions that drive loyalty and growth.
Enhanced Consumer Engagement
More and more direct-to-consumer brands are adopting AR to boost the shopping experience, with the goal of AR features boosting conversions. Integrating AR technology into e-commerce platforms or mobile apps allows brands to supply customers the flexibility to virtually experience or “try before you purchase.” For instance, Acura used AR to develop a racing game that reimagines the test drive experience and showcases its engineering prowess.
Location-Specific AR
In addition to enhancing the web shopping experience, AR makes immersive in-person experiences possible. Looking to drive foot traffic? Try integrating AR into your brick-and-mortar experience through guided tours, interactive product displays, or product packaging. A food market, as an illustration, could create an AR app that shows customers which products meet their dietary needs and preferences.
Getting Started with AR
When considering how you may use AR on your brand, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. From consumer education to experiential marketing, the choices are limitless. Consider choosing one specific use case to begin with, be it promoting, a retail-specific campaign, or worker training.
To do that, evaluate what area of your customer experience might be potentially impacted by implementing AR, similar to enhancing product visualization, creating interactive promoting campaigns, offering virtual try-on experiences, providing educational content, or creating immersive in-store experiences.
Launching Your AR Initiative
Once you’ve decided which AR tactic to make use of, map out how you may enhance product visualization, create interactive promoting campaigns, offer virtual try-on experiences, provide educational content, or create immersive in-store experiences. Finally, take into consideration the way you’ll inform customers about your recent initiative.
A Bright Future Ahead
Overall, brands that embrace AR technology have great potential to create unique and interesting experiences that drive business results. Crafting an AR strategy may also help industries stay ahead of the curve and shape the longer term of customer engagement.
Conclusion
In conclusion, AR is revolutionizing the way in which businesses interact with their customers, and it’s an exciting time for corporations to explore this technology. Whether you’re in retail, arts, gaming, or something completely different, now might be the time to begin exploring AR and unlocking its full potential for your online business.
