7 Best E-commerce Augmented Reality Apps and Examples in April 2024

How Augmented Reality helps e-commerce?

Nowadays, more and more renowned brands select Augmented Reality apps as the way to develop their businesses. It seems to be a useful guide to the modern world of successful merchandising because the AR features provide interaction with customers.

What’s interesting, e-commerce is by far becoming a substitute for offline shopping. Potential buyers can preview lots of furniture and other articles in their physical space and try on clothes beforehand. This helps buyers save their time and choose well-fitting products straight away.

Preview placement. One of the most frequent problems for customers, when they shop online, is selecting the wrong product. Fortunately, Augmented Reality development gradually makes these issues disappear, as the buyers can previously take a look at the items within their physical surroundings. There is an opportunity to choose a favorite furniture unit in an online store and place it in a real environment. Thus the customers can become designers and enjoy easy shopping.

Virtual try-on solutions. When a person gets their purchases delivered, they wait for their ideal match. Statistically speaking, 34% of the consumers, who buy on Amazon, return their goods because of the wrong size or color. It is the same with the other retailers, from which around 46% of consumers return their purchases according to the above-mentioned reasons.

Luckily, Augmented Reality helps come up with a solution to this problem. When buying a product, a person can check many things, from testing a new lipstick to trying on kitchen wallpapers. That is how people can choose items that are more likely to meet their expectations in real life.

These days more and more trademarks and retailers choose to use AR technologies to make their service better and more comfortable.

Try-before-you-buy. The sales industry faces a large number of purchase returns due to consumers’ disappointment, which, in fact, cannot have a good influence. Here Augmented Reality may become a way out. Try-before-you-buy is an online alternative to regular shopping. It leads to a greater number of satisfied customers and an increase in income. It also means that a brand puts its customer experience first.

Engages customers. The key to success for businesses is constant interaction with their customers. Consumer experience is what builds brand awareness. The more points of connection there are, the better. In-store experiences can be transported to the buyer’s existing surroundings with the help of AR. Sizing, fitting, color selection can turn to be fast and easily reversible. All these Augmented Reality features help consumers make well-grounded decisions and purchase suitable goods.

Wow factor. Today it is not an easy task to stand out from the crowded e-commerce market. An opportunity to check potential purchases in AR can greatly influence your customers’ choices and loyalty.

COVID-19. COVID-19 pandemic has totally changed lives in many communities worldwide. And sales industry is not an exception. For instance, compared to last year's lowest-performing day, the fashion business in France has a 41% decrease in net profit and 29% in the UK. This year's potential 20.6% reduction of clothing and footwear sales is expected, leading to a loss of £12.6bn within the retail industry in the UK.

To keep their places in the market, businesses have to adapt to the new normal. This can be achieved by adding AR features to their service.

Making use of Augmented Reality in electronic commerce and even classic offline businesses could be a gamechanger and helper during these difficult times. AR technology provides customers with an opportunity to see and try goods right in their apartments during lockdowns. Moreover, the 'BUY NOW' button in AR stimulates customers to purchase products faster and easier.

Key studies

The AR market is expected to grow up to 18 billion U.S. dollars by 2023. The Statista platform forecasts that by 2022 the total sum spent on Augmented Reality apps will grow up to $15.497 million.

Augmented Reality is a new way to improve the customer journey. According to the survey data, it was stated that:

• About 61% of people choose to purchase online at shops with AR features.
• 71% of consumers would often shop at retailers, who as well provide them with AR.
• 40% of respondents were eager to pay more for an opportunity to previously try on the chosen product with the help of AR.

To meet increasing demand, most e-commerce stores and retailers opt for adding AR experiences to their mobile applications and websites.

For e-commerce marketers, a key point of turning to Augmented Reality is that a satisfactory customer experience leads to an increase in purchases and a decrease in returns. The Study proved, if potential buyers had an opportunity to try on clothes beforehand, it would give 67% conversion. Once a person experiences the product, most fears and hesitations go away. What's more, people become more willing to spend money.

The following statistics show how Augmented Reality influences the e-commerce market:

• 63% of respondents believe that their shopping would turn to be totally different with AR.
• 61% of customers prefer to purchase items in e-stores with AR features.
• 51% of shoppers understand that stores don't use AR at full power.
• 70% of consumers are ready to become more loyal to brands that provide them with the option to use AR.

Where to find Augmented Reality e-commerce examples?

On Catchar there are various examples of e-commerce applications based on AR that you can sort by rating, date, frameworks and type. Explore screenshots and look over reviews based on the Catchar team experience, download applications and master your skills of using it. You are also welcome to rate applications and leave your personal review. If you want to learn more about Augmented and Mixed Reality, you can also check out series of curated digests on Catchar.

How to promote e-commerce AR apps?

Why choose Catchar? Many developers, companies and studios select Catchar to showcase and promote their Augmented Reality applications. Our team is doing its best to spread and further AR products across more than 30,000 connections accessible in chats, newsletters and social media networks. Get your early adopters with Catchar on the spot or scale your AR e-commerce projects globally in a short time.

Below you can find some more useful tips about how to promote your e-commerce projects and applications:

Provide in-app instructions. Give direct and understandable instructions on the further use of your app. It is also critical to attach screenshots or videos of AR experience that can be even better for the users.

Create a demo video. Produce instructive and persuasive videos where you can answer the most frequently asked questions and show how to use your application. This can help you avoid a lot of queries and misunderstandings.

Make your AR content shareable. Create an opportunity for the users to share their in-app Augmented Reality experiences. Allow them to share photos and videos within the AR environment and add branded hashtags.

How to develop e-commerce AR apps?

The moment you thought about extending your business in e-commerce by adding Augmented Reality features to it, Catchar will be there to help. Thousands of designers, developers and project managers offer their professional skills to create complex AR experiences.

Below you can look through things you should take into account.

Think of your business objectives thoroughly. You can start with asking yourself the following questions:

• Is AR the right thing for you?
• What goals do you want to achieve?
• Will it improve the customer experience?

Obviously, these questions will come in handy if you are looking for new ways to improve your e-commerce store. Answering them will clarify the further path for your development. The next step is to get acquainted with the technical characteristics of Augmented Reality that can become easy with the help of the Catchar team. In case you cannot come up with the desired goals, you could always consult the Catchar advisors and professionals on our website and get feedback on further development.

Establish what kind of Augmented Reality SDKs and frameworks you are going to embrace. Necessary criteria for the AR tools assessment are stated below:

License type. If you have a low budget, you can always choose an Augmented Reality platform that provides a free license. Sometimes you are allowed to work with not only free but also commercial licenses. Nevertheless, free versions of software don't offer all the available features for the users in full versions.

AR builders. A wide range of 3rd party builders and editors are available on the market that helps develop Augmented Reality experiences for non-technical users. As a result, you and your team can build a series of AR projects and products for your e-commerce business without any technical knowledge. Note that additional fees and licenses could be required.

Editors could be a great idea to pivot and test how Augmented Reality can apply to your business. Basically, all of them have their own CMS systems, analytics and reports and even SDKs.

Custom development. You always have the choice to develop custom Augmented Reality apps or improve the present ones by adding AR features for the consumers. However, you should consider that it will be more time- and financially consuming in such a case than getting the help of AR builders and editors. Nevertheless, you can be sure to get a clear return on investment in the future. Libraries and tools that can help you out to build AR e-commerce experiences are the following: ARKit, ARCore, Vuforia/PTC, Wikitude.

Supported devices. Ensure that the tool you are using supports the hardware of your application when choosing where your app will be run: on AR glasses, laptops or smartphones.

WebAR. WebAR is the most appropriate technology for e-commerce. It helps run AR experiences and content right away in customers' browsers. No app is needed! If complicated interactions with 3D content inside AR experiences are unnecessary, you can build and run WebAR experiences quickly and cheaply.

Supported OS. In case you want your application to be compatible with a few operating systems (Android, iOS, Windows, etc.), ensure that the chosen platform supports all of these OS.

Capabilities. It can seem that all AR applications are developed in the same way and have similar features, which is wrong because they can provide totally different types of experiences. When creating a geolocation-based AR app, for example, you should pick the frameworks and tools that support this feature. That is why you need to opt for the right platform properly.

How to hire professional AR developers?

There are many sources across the web where you can hire AR developers, but on Catchar, we focus on the most professional ones. Discover and employ thousands of Augmented Reality developers, artists and designers. Share your requirements with them or connect with our mentors and team leaders to get help and create AR apps together.