Augmented reality allows ecommerce businesses to create compelling new online shopping experiences and gives savvy developers a new profit-generating technology to offer clients.
What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality (AR) refers to any software application that combines a verbatim representation of the world with a computer-enhanced version of it. This can occur with any of the senses, but is probably the most dramatic when focused on visual information.
Because of this general visual focus, AR is frequently a user’s webcam overlaid with contextually relevant graphical information. Oftentimes, the user will show a picture (called a marker) to the camera, and use that picture to control the CGI content. Like many tools, AR’s usefulness depends on how it is employed. So far, most executions have been entertainment focused and few have attempted to be useful to the consumer.
Making AR Useful to Online Consumers
So when should you use augmented reality? Use it when it makes sense for the consumer.
Because the greatest barrier to AR adoption is the lack of webcam penetration, it should be used in scenarios where a non-webcam-required experience is possible or already exists, and AR can enhance or improve that shopping experience.
An example from Zugara, the company I work for, seeks to enhance the online apparel-shopping experience. One of the greatest challenges that ecommerce apparel retailers (and ecommerce retailers in general) face is the drop off of potential customers who actually put items of interest in their shopping carts, but then do not follow through and complete the purchase. Zugara has created a software development kit (SDK) for ecommerce retailers that allows them to improve conversion rates for these “window shoppers” by making the online retail experience more like the offline experience. Specifically, by allowing shoppers to overlay images of clothing on top of a live webcam feed, effectively replicating the brick-and-mortar shopping experience of walking up to a clothing rack, selecting an article of clothing, and holding it up to your chest or waist as you look in a mirror. When people see themselves with an item and they can clearly imagine themselves wearing that item, they tend to form more of an emotional connection to the product and are more likely to follow through with the purchase.
AR can even go further. It can link to social networks, and allow shoppers to solicit the opinions of friends and family before they complete the purchase. This is because the SDK includes functionality to take a snapshot of the shopper “trying the item on” and then upload that picture to Facebook, allowing he or she to get almost feedback from the people they trust most. This Zugara example illustrates the fundamental point that by starting with a business problem first, and then using specific technologies, like AR, to address specific issues, a successful execution can be conceived. An execution, conversely, should not start with a technology selection (i.e., “Hey we want to use AR?”) and then the question, “How can we use it?”
How to Implement AR to Solve Ecommerce Challenges: Browsers Plug-ins vs. Flash
There are two general approaches to building AR applications for the web. First, you can look to third-party technology firms that have built custom browser plug-ins. Several prominent AR companies, including Metaio and Total Immersion, offer solutions in this area. The primary advantage to this approach is that these browser plugins can access the internal graphics acceleration hardware on the customer’s computer. This allows for more complex graphics manipulations—such as overlaying visually rich 3D models on the video feed. These plug-ins, also, frequently have the most flexibility in what real-world objects can be used as a marker.
The other approach is use Adobe Flash. Flash-based executions are newer, but ultimately hold more promise. For one, Flash is already installed on the vast majority of web browsers. The requirement of installing an additional plug-in to a browser has proven to be a great barrier for other applications in the past. This is because consumers face difficulties ranging from not being savvy enough to install new software to not having permissions on computers at work. Since webcam penetration is already a significant barrier, multiplying these two—webcams and the need to install a browser plug-in—severely restricts the number of consumers the AR execution can reach. Moreover, there is a large base of Flash developers already in the market, which can mean that using a Flash-based SDK allows for much faster, more flexible, and less expensive execution. Finally, it’s very straightforward to integrate Flash code with all the major site metrics solutions out there, from Google Analytics to Omniture, which is crucial when discussing applications that are expected to produce a measurable return on investment.
Implement AR that Anticipates Trends
A key in emerging media is not only to adapt to the latest technologies, but also to anticipate where things are headed. One prediction is easy—AR is moving towards what is generally called “markerless“ executions, which means the software can be much more flexible with respect to what it treats as a marker. FLARToolkit (the most commonly used Flash-based AR codebase) requires a marker that is square, has a thick black background, and other constraints. Plug-in-based executions and newer Flash executions can use almost anything as a marker – a magazine cover, a drink bottle, a hand, or whatever else might be visible to a webcam. The lack of need for a special marker will predominate moving forward because the whole point of AR is that it will provide contextual information over the real world, not a specially customized version of the world around us.
AR is most effective when it enhances the deepest aspect of real-world interaction – interaction with other people. But simple “snapshot to Facebook” style integration, as described above, is just the beginning. Imagine a videoconferencing application that leverages AR in its various forms. In the context of the shopping application discussed above, it could permit a mother to go shopping with her daughter who is away at college. It could mean that a husband and wife could pick furniture for their new apartment while she is on a business trip. Or, it could allow an architect to present his building model to his clients remotely.
