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3d technology for ecommerce industry a detailed-overview

Posted on September 28th, 2020

If you are associated with the eCommerce industry, you probably have already heard about the term “3D” numerous times. Everyone is defining it in their own ways and with enormous information on the web, it’s really hard for a non-techie seller to understand what it is actually. In this article, we will try to help you understand what is 3D technology for the eCommerce industry, in the simplest way is possible.

What’s the most common and biggest challenge an online seller encounters?

It’s providing in-store experience to a buyer online. Most of your buyers are accustomed to purchasing products offline – from a shopping mall or a physical store. As they shift to digital stores, they expect the same experience from it. And the good news is you can provide them with the almost similar experience – where they can check out a product from multiple angles and get proper understanding of its color, shape, size and even application. Not just that, you can also enable them to see how the product will look in real life. Welcome to the amazing world of 3D.

At the heart of it, 3D content creation entails designing and displaying three-dimensional imagery in two-dimensional viewers like a phone screen.

Improper product demonstrations will not generate the awareness your original products should get. 3D allows you to do justice to your creation – by creating photo realistic and accurate images for presentation and advertising.Your product demonstrations can be modified in terms of color, design, background, etc as per customer preference. With 3D technologies, you can create the high-quality visual content for your online store that will not just engage your visitors but also turn them into paying customers.

Role of 3D in the growth of ecommerce

There are 24 million online stores operating today. Imagine the competition in the saturated online marketplace with numerous businesses offering more or less the same products. The only differentiating factor is the experience each online store provides. If you want to stand out amongst the competition and take your online store a touch above the rest, you will have to focus on providing unforgettably great customer experiences. One way to do this is to include configurable, life-like 3D product models on your eCommerce website.

The most wisely used 3D technologies used in the market today includes – 3D modelling, 3D rendering, Computed generated imagery (CGI), 3D animation and 360 degree viewer, and Augmented reality.

Benefits of 3D for eCommerce Industry

The eCommerce industry is leveraging the latest technologies to broaden its scope and match or even better in-store shopping experiences. Let’s look at the major benefits that 3D brings to the eCommerce industry:

Better Customer Experience
Customers are more empowered than ever in this day and age. If a customer expects something, it becomes the gospel for businesses and they must implement it to succeed in the market. Customers today want accurate, high-quality product representations to support their buying decisions on e-commerce websites. With 3D product modeling, you can provide highly customizable product viewing experiences. Customers can view products from multiple angles, zoom in to see more details, and virtually place them in their environment to make positive purchase decisions.

Incredibly Versatile and Flexible
No two customers are the same. Every customer will have unique requirements to make a single product ideal for them. It’s not a possibility to create multiple physical versions of a single product according to different customer demands. This is where 3D configuration and CGI technology comes in handy. You can create multiple CGI versions of one product all varying in properties such as color and size as per customer demand to cater to everyone’s unique needs without exhausting your business budget.

3D is Budget-friendly
While high-quality product photography may seem an attractive option at first, it isn’t viable when you delve into its nuances. To photograph a single product, you will have to manufacture a prototype, hire a professional photographer and designer, rent a studio and arrange for background props. After all this, if for any reason, you decide to discard the prototype, you will have wasted all your investments and efforts photographing it as its images will be rendered useless. Not at all cost-effective right? On the other hand, 3D models can perfectly replace physical prototypes and can be redesigned and modified countless times for almost half the cost of product photography.

Precise and Perfect Assets, Every Time
Static 2D images don’t allow much tinkering with the details without losing vital resolutions and quality. With 3D product models, however, you can tone down the details to facilitate smooth rendering on your website without compromising on the photorealistic properties. This is a prominent advantage of choosing 3D product models over conventional 2D photographs. Sellers can easily take advantage of this type of precision to make product features stand out clearly or showcase how a product might fit into an environment. With the use of 3D product rendering you can have perfect and precise assets, every time.

Pre-sell Products to Identify Market Demand
Who does not want to see the market demand before investing? Using 3D technologies, you can start marketing your product to your target audience way before creating the actual product. As your customers interact with the product and share their feedback, you can use those insights to improve your products to achieve better product-market fit. Sometimes, the evaluation even leads you to a conclusion that the market may not be ready for a certain product yet and as a result, you save enormous time and money.

The Swedish furniture giant has been aggressively using 3D technologies like 3D animation, 3D visualization and Computer-generated imagery (CGI) for their catalogues. IKEA’s first CGI venture was a pinewood chair in 20z06 and by 2012, Wall Street reported that 25% of their products were crated through CGI and the ratio has recently jumped to around 75%.

Have you already implemented 3D in your business or planning to implement ? Do let us know your thoughts in the comments or if you have any questions, feel free to write to us at [email protected].