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How Augmented Reality Is Reshaping E-Commerce Experiences In 2025
In Lets Nurture
05 May. 25
27 VIEWS
Augmented reality is providing a whole new type of virtual shopping experience in an e-commerce environment.
A user browsing their favorite e-commerce store on their smartphone can tap into revolutionary AR features for more immersive, interactive shopping. Try on and visualize products. Discover more about how a product interacts with you. A shopper can reduce their own uncertainty and boost their confidence in a product before making the ultimate decision on whether to buy or not.
As many online stores and brands have discovered, the result of combining AR and e-commerce has meant increased sales, fewer returns, and a closer connection between product lines and target customer. In this blog, we delve into how augmented reality is reshaping e-commerce experiences and explore what you can expect to see from groundbreaking AR in the next twelve months.
The Rise Of AR In E-Commerce: Personalizing The Shopping Journey
Any e-commerce business can leverage AR to provide more personalized, interactive shopping journeys.
- Offer customers virtual try-ons to deliver a more realistic, engaging experience than a static image.
- Provide 3D product views. Enhance product pages to make them interactive where a user can rotate, zoom in, and examine from all angles.
- Preview in-home placements with interactive AR demos. Interact with product features, exploring and testing a product in your environment.
- Include AR in a mobile e-commerce app to make immersive shopping accessible at any time from anywhere.
- Customize products in real-time using AR to adjust color, materials, size, and other components.
- Use AR in e-commerce social media integration to add features to your presence on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Market directly on social feeds and tailor impulse-friendly marketing through virtual product try-ons without having to lead the consumer back to your website.
- Improve accessibility through AR features, offering voice controls, visual cues, and audio enhancements, broadening an e-commerce brand’s customer base and ensuring a more equitable shopping experience.
- Potentially scale AR in the future alongside AI-driven personalization and multi-sensory experiences.
AR’s early adoption was focused predominantly around gaming but today, it’s a key feature of online shopping brands, driving trillions of dollars in value creation this decade. From home to food, fitness, apparel, jewelry, and more, dozens of product categories are capitalizing on AR technology.
Why Use Augmented Reality In Your E-Commerce Store Website And App
1. Enhance Customer Confidence
A customer is able to see, use, and test a product right before their eyes using augmented reality. It gives them more confidence of what to expect should they decide to purchase. This builds trust and accelerates the purchase decision.
2. Reduce Hesitation In Online Purchases
Any objective or hesitation in buying a product relating to questions around size, color, or physical or functional characteristics can be solved with augmented reality presenting a product in a whole new different format.
3. Drive Higher Conversion Rates
An e-commerce store with AR consistently produces a higher conversion rate than an e-commerce store without.
In fact, some customers are so accustomed to searching for augmented reality when shopping online that they will go to a competitor if they’re on a page with a brand that doesn’t offer any sort of immersive experience.
4. Lower Return Rates
Across every e-commerce industry, companies see fewer returns when they use AR. This is where augmented reality has made one of its biggest impacts. Now, a customer buying a product online can visualize the fit, size, and scale accurately. They are far, far less likely to be dissatisfied when they receive the finished product. This reduces the associated costs of returns for your business.
Key Industries Already Using Augmented Reality In E-Commerce
1. Fashion Retailers Using Virtual Try-Ons With AR
Many fashion companies in an e-commerce setting are offering virtual try-ons for clothes, accessories (such as glasses), jewelry, and makeup. A shopper can accurately visualize how an item looks on them without having to visit a store or risk a return. In fashion, AR perfectly bridges online and in-store shopping, elevating the trendy brands that partake.
2. Home Decor And Furniture Brands Visualize With AR
While a home decor or furniture company can offer measurements and physical specs, it doesn’t quite let a customer know how an item might look in their home. AR in e-commerce places true-to-scale models of sofas, tables, wall art, and other items in a customer’s living space. This reduces guesswork in how an interior design purchase will look like.
3. Eyewear And Glasses Companies Offering Try-On AR Overlays
Eyewear brands use augmented reality to let customers try on glasses using a mix of facial recognition and camera overlays. AR lets a brand adjust a set of eyeglasses to a user’s face shape and size, providing a realistic preview. For a product like eyeglasses which are more likely to see fit issues, it’s essential a customer choose what they choose with confidence. AR helps with that.
4. Beauty And Cosmetics Brands Use AR To Try Out Products
Cosmetic brands can use AR to help users try out lipstick shades, nail polish colors, eyeshadows, and foundations. Mimic real application results instantly. Help any user discover the perfect match for their look and skin before committing to a definitive purchase. Sephora is one of several brands that is experimenting with augmented reality to try on makeup.
5. Clothing Companies Ensure Sizing Accuracy With AR
Clothing brands and online apparel use AI and AR in e-commerce to improve sizing recommendations. Analyzing body scans and photos, an apparel company can provide better-fitting garments, decreasing the likelihood of returns due to size mismatching. A customer can visualize how a product looks and feels with a strong degree of accuracy.
6. Jewelry And Luxury Product Visualizations With AR
Jewelry retailers are using augmented reality to let users try on rings, watches, and necklaces. High-resolution rendering and provide a lifelike preview of the finest details prior to purchase. To some degree, this helps to replicate the exclusive feel of boutique shopping and reduces surprises. Customize by altering the type of metal, gemstone color, or engravings if this is a service offered.
7. Live E-Commerce Companies Using AR To Enhance Live Shopping
More live shopping companies and e-commerce sales events are using AR elements to enable showcases and try-ons. As a host demonstrates a product’s features, a viewer is encouraged to interact with the product. This alone spurs more conversation during live sessions and is known to spur more sales.
8. Grocery Delivery Using AR In E-Commerce To Entice The Buyer
More grocery platforms are experimenting with AR to create a more enticing presentation of food, whether this is to visualize ingredients, portion sizes, specific meal previews, or methods of preparation. This paves the way for more informed purchasing. Visualize what it is to prepare a specific food in your own home.
9. Subscription Boxes Can Preview Monthly Items Before Delivery
Subscription boxes that offer a lot of first-time products can use AR to let their customers preview monthly items. Let users explore what’s coming, a feature that is especially pertinent if the brand allows for swaps or upgrades.
The Importance Of Augmented Reality To The E-Commerce Customer Experience
AR has proven to be more than just a trend. It is a dominating element of e-commerce store design and sales.
A blend of digital and physical, a customer can now shop from their home as if they were browsing in-person. It’s interactive, educational, and sales-friendly, with augmented reality redefining what is possible in e-commerce in many ways.
From a customer standpoint, the beauty of AR in e-commerce is how easy it is to use. There’s no clicking, signing up or registration, no scanning a QR code, and nothing difficult. It organically integrates into your existing e-commerce store, enhancing conversion rates and dramatically increasing engagement with your products and brand.
Add to this advancements that continue to be made with artificial intelligence, LLMs, and similar technology, this is improving upon existing augmented reality to add even more to its use.
What The Future Of AR In E-Commerce Looks Like
In 2022, the augmented reality market was valued at $40.12 billion. It is projected to reach $1.2 trillion by 2032.
While AI and other tech may be receiving more attention at present, the world’s biggest corporations continue to pour in massive investments into augmented reality.
- Google purchased Raxium in 2022, a company specializing in AR/VR smart glasses.
- Apple acquired Mira in 2023, an AR headset company.
- Smartphone manufacturers are making AR e-commerce more accessible through improved hardware and software. This includes depth sensing hardware, i.e. LiDAR and ToF.
- Microsoft, Lenovo, and Vuzix are all invested in developing some version of AR/VR smart glasses.
It is becoming easier than ever for a company of any size, including startups, to tap into the potential of AR.
For example, templates through Snapchat’s SnapAR Lens Studio or Meta Spark for Instagram allow brands the chance to use filters. Amazon’s Sumerian facilitates a way to create and publish augmented reality product listings directly on Amazon.
Will You Consider AR In E-Commerce For Your Online Shopping Website?
If it’s not already, it won’t be long until augmented reality is an essential part of every online shopping experience. It’s statistically shown to improve the customer experience, reduce obstacles to purchasing, and personalizes the experience of buying and selling online.
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Posted by kashyap
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