The furniture industry is experiencing a rapid wave of digitalization and transformation, with the desire to boost sales, decrease returns and improve customer experience.

Furniture retailers and e-commerce market leaders such as Ikea, Wayfair and Houzz have already invested in Augmented Reality (AR) technology and solutions in order to be ahead of the competition and to be able to attract more customers to their websites and online stores.

According to Houzz, clients are 11 times more inclined to buy a product if they have visualized it with the help of the AR technology. Augmented Reality is undoubtedly one of the major drivers for sales in 2020 for many retail industries, which helps customers envision products in their home environment and build a strong emotional attachment with the product and brand. 

Many furniture businesses still assume that the access to AR technology is not available for small to medium sized companies due to high costs and implementation time. However things have changed a lot in the past years, big tech companies such as Apple and Google have heavily invested in the development of Augmented Reality. The costs of implementing AR became significantly lower and implementation and testing much faster. AR technologies are available for everyone to use.

Releases of Apple AR Kit and Google ARCore in 2019 brought to AR developers a possibility to visualize 3D content online without any additional applications installed on the customers smartphones. Building on that our company ViewAR has developed a converter, which makes it possible to create AR compatible 3D models for iOS (USDZ) and Android (glb/mode-viewer) in short times. This new competitive feature can be quickly implemented on your company website or online store and it does not require a skyrocketing investment or months of implementation. 

Once your furniture items are digitalized any preset configuration can be shown within seconds to a customer. A JavaScript snippet will identify the product variant and will inject a “see in AR button”. Using this approach, your customer will be able to see all your product in all possible configurations in AR. 

An automated, customer on demand process will be enhancing your current offer, boosting your sales while decreasing your returns and ultimately costs.