With the invention and upgrading technologies, the Fashion and Retail industry will look completely different in the upcoming tech years.
You ask, How?
The answer is Augmented Reality in Fashion Retail.
Implementation of AR in fashion will take online shopping one step ahead with virtual try-outs, explore color choices, have a personalized experience, making it fun and interactive. This blog sheds light on how Augmented Reality Development in fashion retail benefits the customers and fulfills business advantages. We will also discuss AR solutions holding a huge contribution in the future of Fashion.
Before jumping into the technical aspects, let’s first understand the basics of Augmented Reality that brings life to the fashion industry in the digital world.
What is AR?
Augmented Reality (AR) is an excellent technology that offers an interactive experience of real-world objects developed with sound, sensory, or other visual elements. It collects all the digital information and computer-generated visuals to integrate it with the real-time environment giving a 3D experience to the users.
How Augmented Reality Transforms Fashion Retail?
Virtually Try Before Buy Feature
AR creates a platform aka digital storefronts for the people who prefer a one-click shopping experience right away, avoiding the queue of dressing rooms in malls or physical stores. AR makes it hassle-free and exciting by integrating tons of engaging features namely virtual try-outs, digital assistants, and AR mirrors to explore your right choice of size, color, and style within a few taps on the app. All of these features support the customers to enjoy a unique shopping experience, avoid the hassle of running to the salesperson, and saving a lot of time by enabling quick purchase decisions.
Improved In-store Navigation
Augmented Reality app development makes it easier for customers to take a virtual tour through the entire collection on the go. For this, luxury retailers in Fashion use multiple AR tools like AR lenses, filters, code scans, and embedded experiences around customer environments to enhance their research and shopping experience online. With improved in-store navigation, the customer can easily find a product with minimum browsing and make perfect purchases.
Transforming Retail Stores
AR is comforting and friendly for the potential buyers who shy away from entering a store to ask for sales assistance, check pricing or specifications. On the contrary, the customer can quickly scan and determine the product authenticity, fabric details, design, and check through product close-ups in real-time. AR app solutions provide a virtual tour of the store to scout for product styles, check fittings, colors, and varieties to make the process more exciting rather than tiring. All of these factors play a major role in transforming retail stores both online and offline. Given the pandemic situations, Augmented Reality offers convenient options (for brands and consumers) to make real-time, contactless, and emotionally satisfying shopping experiences.
Style the Look
Before the inception and development of AR fashion apps, styling a complete look with outfits, accessories, and shoes can take a lot of time. Manier times, buyers need a creative vision even after trying out options. The AR magical mirrors work as digital attendants to help customers browse outfits, discover personal style, and assist in shopping online. These assistants move in-store to in-home to help you style your look from morning workouts to get dressed for the day.
AR Opportunities
Post pandemic, AR opportunities have turned a corner for the fashion industry and luxury brands. AR applications adhere to social distancing and also creates a holographic image of the product for the customers to enjoy a real-world experience. Luxury Retailers in Fashion can consider reinventing their digital presence with a showroom-like experience. AR mirrors, AR runway shows, windows displays, and AR showrooms are some of the opportunities implemented by luxury fashion brands offering contactless AR try-outs.
AR for Luxury Brands
Some of the top international fashion brands in the industry are becoming adaptive to AR application development and delving into the AR opportunities, such as AR lenses, interactive AR window displays, holographic models to magic mirrors to level up the user experience. For instance, Chanel uses AR lenses to immerse audiences and extend its marketing efforts, Dior makes a series of AR filters to try out various accessories for real-time visualization, Burberry implements AR shopping tools to create embedded experiences of their product around the customer environment which helps them to make informed purchase decisions.
How does AR benefit the Fashion Industry?
Let us have a look at the remarkable benefits of Augmented Reality in Fashion Retail. The following is the list of major advantages for luxury brands and fashion businesses when they invest in Augmented Reality Storefronts.
Brand Awareness
From small businesses to fashion giants, it has been challenging to create and sustain brand awareness among customers. AR comes with hi-tech digital dimensions for fashion brands serving a range of functional possibilities and making a point that their customers stand out from the competition. The development of AR fashion apps creates an impactful brand image aligned to the trends with a seamless shopping experience and an advertising footprint.
Cost-Effective
Creating Augmented Reality applications for online or offline stores offers a satisfying customer experience in real-time. Augmented Reality solutions help to cut down costs with the help of digital evolution in design and production. Moreover, with the right choice of product and shopping, the customers are less likely to make a return request, for which the expense is borne by the company. Again, fashion marketing involves a lot of expense, and a virtual fashion show on AR apps can cost less compared to a physical collection launch or marketing event.
Customer Engagement
AR solutions for fashion completely upgrade traditional shopping by integrating visual elements into the real-world environment of customers. Fashion AR apps allow the user to enjoy smart shopping with the comfort of their couch, apply filters, experience the virtual store, find perfect outfits or get assistance from the chatbots about style, color, and product details within their fingertips — quick & easy. All of these features are super-rich to keep the user engaged with the product and get intrigued by it to convert.
Increase Web Sales
Many of the online fashion retailers support the fact that shoppers are more likely to prefer virtual storefronts rather than traditional shopping. The good news is that developing AR apps for fashion retailers can increase sales. The creative selection process makes the customers proactive to browse around the virtual stores for long, and checkout without second-guessing. The fun and playful shopping experience of virtual department stores through augmented reality increases web sales.
Augmented Reality in Fashion: The Future
AR design and development is necessary to stay aligned and relevant to future technology that holds a huge ability to interact with the audience. The post-pandemic world has become exceptionally tech-savvy, influencing the brands to reinvent themselves and level up to keep up with the competition. Intriguing experience and couch-comfort shopping are credible reasons for developing AR applications in Fashion Retail. The AR application solutions add a brand new layer to digital storytelling and interactivity with the beautiful store representation, ethical resourcing, and AR window displays.
This was all about AR impacting the luxury retailers in the fashion industry and making a futuristic transformation. We hope you are inspired and informed enough to get started with the next AR app development in Fashion Retail.
