The product is the basis and often the only connection from a brand to their customer. This is why it is important to give the user the best experience with or while using the product. But before that, the user needs to buy the product and especially he needs reasons to buy it.
In the best case, this is reached by convincing the user because he feels he need this certain product. Design Thinkers would say, you need to create a whole user experience about the product to make your clients happy.
This usere experience starts by collecting information about the product. Why does the consumer need it and what does it have to offer?
While typical medium for this steps were the seller with a personal service, the internet or friends and acquaintance, Augmented Reality is a new way to give the user a excellent and individual experience to gain information about the product.
This kind of experience can be handled by many ways. No matter if the custumers smartphone, glasses or a headset is used to give this experience, no matter if it can be used at home, on a website or even at a shop, this will bring the product information to a next level. And not only in a fun way but also giving the feeling of being a advanced, forward-looking and competently brand or company.
Also most of the new technology poduct information medium are tending the user to buy online. Thinking of the internet where you can read blogs or recommandations for mostly all products, buying the product aferwards with only one click is very confertable but also a big issue for our local shops and the economy of small brands and companys. With giving them a digital experience via AR but in the shop, it will probably make them coming to the shops and trying out this nice and fun experience. Obviously there is a high chance of buying the product in locally in the shop afterwards.
A nice example for this is the Toyota AR experience of 2019 where they presented their new C-HR model by a AR app. It gave the customer a experience of the inner systems of the car as they where overlayed on a real ohysical car. Additional to that, the customer could even interact with the car to get more information about motor, battery and fuel tank.
Toyota – vehicle demo
Thinking one step further, this kind of information about the product can also fix problems in future. If there are light problems with your products, the AR app could offer solutions while scanning the product and offer the customer a guid for fixing. This could not only optimze the service time but also saves costs for the customer and time for the brand.
The goal about product information with AR
When doing just a small research about this topic now, there are many and more applications which already ofer some kind of information about a product already. But this can also go in the wrong direction. A customer who is taking out his smartphone, maybe even downloading an app and scanning the product then will be dissappointet by just getting informations about the product which he could find out without scanning the product as well. Thinking of a food product which shows if the product is gluten free or diary free but with also having exactly this labels on the pagage already will make the user being frustrated and not using it any more. In the worse case the user would even not buying the product because of that.
Also sending the user to a social media platform or something like this is fun for the first time but would not make the user use it regularly.
Also for products where many information could be given but the surface on the pagaging is limited – for example when thinking of wine bottles – AR is a great way, to give as many information als needed to convince the customer to buy the bottle.
Regarding the current situation while touching a product in a supermarket which could have been touched before by others is the thing you absolutly want to avoid, those AR product informations become a new relevance.
So COVID 19 could have a big impact for using AR to present your product and information about it while using your own smartphone.
Product information with Augmented Reality
Smarter product information with augmented reality
Augmented Reality (AR) for holographic product information in times of COVID19
