How Augmented and Virtual Reality Will Reshape the Retail Industry

­Both Augmented and Virtual reality are the latest trends of this tech-savvy era. The technologies have revolutionized several industries, and retail is one of them. By utilizing these technologies, retailers can completely transform the way shoppers shop from their store.

People can virtually try clothes without having to visit a physical store, virtually place a piece of furniture to identify whether it would look in their house or not, and can inspect the product from each angle while chilling in their house.

The truth is both virtual and augmented reality has the potential to transform the retail industry and provide customers with an exceptional shopping experience. This is the reason why the majority of retailers have already started to hire augmented and virtual reality app development services to build retail apps with amazing features.

If you also own a retail business, it is worth developing an AR/VR-based mobile app which can captivate the customers and provide them with exceptional user experience. However, before looking for AR/VR app developers, let’s first understand how these two technologies are going to reshape the retail industry.

How Augmented and Virtual Reality Will Impact the Retail Industry?

Here’s a hypothetical scenario.

You and your partner want to buy a couch for the house. Now, rather than visiting IKEA’s physical store, you can simply download the app on your iPhone. The app allows you to virtually place all the IKEA couches in your living room. As a result, it would become way easier to figure out which couch is going to make your living room look the best.

In the above scenario, we used Augmented Reality to take the shopping experience to the next level. Moreover, it also allowed the customer to make better shopping decisions. This is how AR is going to impact the retail industry.

Like AR, Virtual Reality can also transform the shopping experience of the customers. For instance, if someone is planning to buy a car, he can take a virtual tour of the car (both interior and exterior) to identify if the car suits his requirements or not.

This will save the customer’s time as he doesn’t have to visit the actual dealership room. Moreover, a VR headset can also be used to compare different vehicles side-by-side.

The reason why retailers should invest in these technologies is due to high competition. It is a well-known fact that ecommerce is one of the most competitive industries. To sell more products on your site, you need to provide customers with exclusive features.

These features will also make your brand surpass the competitors and stand out in the market. Fortunately, integrating Augmented and Virtual Reality in your retail app can help you provide customers with an extensive range of features which deliver amazing shopping experience.

Developing an AR/VR based mobile app can make it easy to transform the growth of your retail business. However, it is extremely important to pick one technology among these two so that your app can fulfill the requirements of your customers.

Here’s how you can choose the most suitable technology for your app.

Augmented Reality vs Virtual Reality – Which Technology is Best for Retail Apps?

When it comes to choosing a technology for your retail app, you need to focus on your target customers. Who are your potential customers? Answering this question will make it way easier to pick the right technology for your app.

If the majority of your target audience are bourgeois, you can’t potentially attract them by developing a VR-based app. Reason being, middle-class people don’t have access to VR headsets. So, even if you have invested in Virtual Reality app development services, your customers won’t be able to get its benefits.

Virtual Reality requires the customer to buy a dedicated VR headset. This is an investment the majority of customers don’t want to make, considering the high prices of VR headsets. Moreover, many people are yet to accustom to wearing a VR headset, even if they are alone in their house.

Of course, people are willing to use these headsets to play games, but the idea of shopping while wearing one seems quite bizarre. This is why Augmented Reality is the perfect choice for retail mobile apps.

Unlike VR, customers do not need to buy additional hardware to access an AR-based mobile app. As long as they own a smartphone, they are all good to go. Moreover, AR doesn’t take the customer to a completely virtual world.

The technology rather overlays virtual elements over the real-life scenario/objects. It means that customers can actually identify how a certain product will look like in real-life scenarios. This will allow customers to make better shopping decisions.

Since you are helping customers with their shopping process, they are most likely to return back to your app in the future. It means that, by building an AR-based mobile app, you can also turn one time buyers into loyal and long-term customers.

Lenskart is the perfect example of an AR-based mobile app which has managed to attract customers through its extensive features. The app allows customers to virtually try different eyeglasses to choose the one which looks the best on their face.

In fact, the eyewear solution company increased the overall revenue by 70% after integrating AR into its mobile app. If you want to achieve the same results, in terms of business growth, hire Augmented Reality application development company India and build a feature-rich retail app for your business.

While AR has more potential to transform the growth of your retail business, it doesn’t mean we should neglect Virtual Reality. With tech giants like Google and Samsung working on releasing budget-friendly VR headsets, we are likely to witness several VR-based apps in the market.

Once you have decided the right technology for your retail app, it is time to look for VR/AR app developers who can transform your app idea into reality. However, hiring developers is extremely critical.

The future of the app depends on the expertise of the developers itself. So, make sure to hire developers who have the potential and right expertise to make your app real.

How to Find The Right Team of Developers for Your Retail App?

Follow the below-mentioned tips to hire the best AR/VR app developers for your app.

Skills and Expertise

The developers that you hire must possess certain skills. Remember you are not developing a traditional app with basic features. So, you need to hire developers who have expertise in 3D modeling, video/sound production skills, and game development as well.

Since the developers will have to create virtual objects, it is extremely important that they should use dedicated tools like Unity to design captivating elements. You can directly ask the developers which tools and technologies they use to develop the apps.

Development Rate

The per hour rate of the developers is also a crucial factor while hiring developers for your retail app. Keep in mind that each development team has its own development rates. The price mainly depends on the location and expertise of the developers.

For instance, the developers in the United States have comparatively higher development rates than Indian developers. So, while hiring developers, make sure to compare different development teams on the basis of the development rates they charge.

Portfolio

It is also important to take a look at the past projects of the developers so that you can easily understand the capabilities of the developers. Look for developers who have already developed similar apps in the past. They’ll be able to blend-in their experience and expertise together to build customized solutions for your app.

In most cases, you’ll find a dedicated portfolio page on the developer’s site. Go through this page and take a look at the type of apps the developers have built in the past. You can also contact the previous clients to check if their expectations were met by the developers or not.

Conclusion

Augmented and Virtual Reality are the latest technologies, which are most likely to impact the growth of many industries including retail. By integrating either of these technologies, you can easily transform the growth of your retail business and attract more customers at the same time. Hire the right team of AR app developers and build apps which can captivate customers and help you improve conversions, thereby bringing more ROI.