Every marketer wants the wow factor for their brand; they want to make the splash that stands out from the crowd and grab the attention of consumers. But making a splash and making a sale are not always synchronous, and since marketing budgets don’t grow on trees, brands must make smart decisions about how to make the most of their marketing dollars to get both.
One of the best solutions to balancing marketing effectiveness and budget is using product visualization and 3D visual configurators to elevate your product imagery and create an immersive experience for your customers. These high quality renderings showcase products in a unique and detailed way, granting consumers a more in depth look at the products and features that they are most interested in. While that checks the box on the wow factor, there is much more benefit to be gained from visual configuration; let’s check out our top three.
Configuring A Product Builds An Emotional Connection
Humans naturally place more value on items that they have a sense of ownership of; creating a product tailored to a consumer’s needs and preferences breeds a sense of connection and a desire to imagine that item as part of their life. In psychology this is called the endowment effect, and the impact of this on purchase habits and consumer behavior has been studied across industries and disciplines. The act of exploring, engaging with, and customizing a product facilitates the sense of ownership as the consumer views it as something they created. Even small customizations, such as color or add ons, help to create that dynamic experience. Research has shown that interactive content drives a conversion 70% of the time, compared to 36% for passive content.
There are few barriers to companies being able to execute this type of tactics, as the threshold to leveraging this effect is surprisingly low. While having a fully configurable product that can be created in an immersive experience will give a consumer the greatest sense of ownership, the simpler approach of a product visualizer will also generate those connections, as long as the consumer has the opportunity to actively engage with the product. For brands who have limited or no configuration available with their products, bringing that immersive element to the shopping journey with product visualization has significant benefits.
Higher Customer Confidence, Lower Returns
No one enjoys ripping open a box expecting to see a particular product and finding out that what they saw online is not the reality of what was delivered. Colors, size, texture, functionality; all of these are areas where photos often let consumers down. Those feelings are amplified for a product that the consumer believed they created to their exact tastes. Studies show that 91% of consumers who are unhappy with a purchase will not do business with a company again; that is a statistic that brands do not want to be on the wrong side of. Providing customers with high quality, high fidelity imagery and detailed views of products with 3d product configurators increases consumer confidence in the product they are purchasing and decreases the chance of returned products. Increasing consumer confidence also decreases the frequency of consumers buying multiple products with the intent of returning one or more. According to a study by Navar, 41% of consumers will purchase items in multiple sizes or colors to determine what they like and then return the rest. Streamline that customer journey by helping them to visualize and confidently purchase exactly what they are looking for the first time.
Decreased Costs for High Quality Visual Assets
High quality imagery plays an important role in the customer journey, from initial discovery, to product evaluation, to final purchase decisions. 67% of consumers say that the quality of a product image is very important to their purchase decision, and content with compelling images gets 94% more views than content without. With all eyes on online, brands cannot afford to skimp on image quality, but traditional photography and videography are both expensive and time consuming, as well as limiting in the views that they offer to the consumer. Both mediums are also only able to capture products at one point in time; if new features, colors, or add ons are made available, a brand must reshoot or lose the opportunity to showcase those newer features. By using product visualization and 3D configuration software, brands have the opportunity to create high quality images for a lower initial investment and have the flexibility to expand product views, features, colors, and textures as needed.
How to Build A 3D Product Experience
Creating immersive experiences and dynamically showcasing a product’s features adds the wow factor to the customer journey and can aid in driving more and increasingly valuable conversions. Dopple's visual commerce platform offers web based product visualization and configuration software designed to integrate seamlessly with existing tech stacks and offers teams the flexibility to scale and expand as products evolve. It’s time to kick static to the curb and enjoying the benefits of 3D visual configuration.
