As per Mckinsey, jewelry brands will expand their market reach to 25-30% of the total market by 2025, taking a big slice from the share of the unbranded segment. This will amount to an additional $80 billion to $100 billion in sales.
Towards this, the management consultancy firm suggested strategies like investing in digital and direct-to-consumer channels and utilizing the latest technologies to get closer to the customer.
So, how can jewelry brands do it? How can they get closer to users using technology? Most importantly, which technology to invest in?
The best option is the deployment of Augmented Reality(AR), hands down.
Why?
Because statistics say so. Brands that deployed AR reaped huge benefits in all spheres of business operations, including business reach, market share, customer engagement, sales, and lesser returns. See the stats:
- Augmented Reality boosts sales conversion by up to a whopping 200% (Forbes). As per Shopify, this number is around a staggering 250%.
- A Snapchat report says 56% of shoppers agree that AR gives them more confidence about product quality.
- AR reduces product return by 40%, as reported by VNTANA’s Ashley Crowder for Shopify.
- AR improves customer engagement by 66%, as per Shiprocket.
These stats show how much of a game-changer AR is for businesses, and this is even more true for the jewelry industry. The glittering industry is languishing when it comes to online commerce, as only 4 to 5 percent of jewelry sales happen online.
This is an area where AR can make a huge difference, and the jewelry industry has ample room to deploy this technology. Plus, AR can also help jewelers attract an increasing number of tech-savvy consumers, especially Gen Z and millennials, who are spending more time shopping online than ever.
So, how can a jewelry brand like yours utilize AR to its own benefit? We, at Vossle, would suggest you take the easiest, safest, and best route of Web-based Virtual Jewelry Try-Ons. In this blog, we will cover the details of virtual try-ons, their types, and how you, as a growing business, can deploy this technology to reap its benefits.
Therefore, hang on as we start with a conceptual explanation of virtual jewelry try-on.
What is a Jewelry Try-on?
Jewelry Try-Ons are a type of AR-enabled tryon experience that overlays 3D models of jewelry products on users.
A tryon experience is one of the many applications of Augmented Reality technology that helps businesses offer digital product trials to their users.
It overlays digital 3D models of a real-world product onto the user, helping them make a confident buying decision and leading to 40% fewer returns. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to identify the specified body parts through the camera of their devices, like smartphones or tablets, and superimpose the virtual product model.
The user would see themselves as wearing the product on the screen, in sync with their movements in real-time. They can turn around and make different gestures to get a better idea of the product and understand its final look on them.
Jewelry businesses can offer tryons using 3D models of any jewelry products such as necklaces, headpieces, earrings, nose rings, etc., Importantly, businesses can do so without jeopardizing the safety of their high-value jewelry products and protect them from theft, loss, physical damage, or any other danger. Even more important is that they can keep their customers and employees safe by deploying virtual jewelry for most of the heavy lifting and keeping real jewelry safe and intact. We will see the benefits in detail in later sections.
How to get Jewelry Try-ons of your own products?
To get your very own jewelry tryons specifically designed for your product ranges, you can use AR platforms like Vossle. It offers a simple and easy way to create an AR experience without writing a single line of code. You just need to upload the 3D models of your jewelry and adjust some settings as per your requirements. The AR jewelry tryon will be ready in just a few minutes.
Vossle’s SAAS platform saves you the expense of hiring a development team and spending a fortune on application development and then on its update and maintenance.
Hence, it’s a win-win for both users and businesses. Users don’t have to go through the lengthy process of downloading the application, filling in details, and uploading their photos from different angles and whatnot before they can see the digital product for themselves.
This is not just a cumbersome process but a privacy nightmare for the user, and they will think twice before engaging with the brand.
Further, with the Vossle platform, businesses don’t have to worry about hiring and maintaining a development team, spending on storage of the hardware and its maintenance, and various other expenses.
They can just share the link provided by the Vossle platform with the user. In turn, users can access the experience through the link provided by the brand. As soon as they click on the link, the experience will get triggered, and the camera on the devices will get turned on.
The camera will show the user’s live image on the screen, and the Artificial Intelligence(AI) in the backend will scan it to find the specific body part as per the user’s experience. For example, if the experience has been programmed to offer earring AR tryons, then the AI will look for the ears and put 3D models of earrings on them.
Users can see it from different angles and from different sides; the 3D jewelry models in the experience have a hyperrealistic appearance with realistic jewelry behavior that corresponds to the real world.
Not only do the jewelry tryons offer AR-based digital trials of your jewelry products anywhere, at any time, but they also give users a clear idea of the product and its relevance to them.
With such a revolutionary try on technology, jewelry brands can offer bespoke online shopping services and create captivating in-store experiences right in the living room of the user.
We will see the various benefits of virtual jewelry try-ons in the later sections. But before that, let’s see the different types of virtual jewelry try-ons you can offer.
What types of Jewelry Try-Ons you can offer?
Businesses can offer virtual try-ons for all kinds of jewelry, including noserings, earrings, necklaces, headpieces, bracelets, bangles, and others.
Although they are not technically categorized, however, we can distribute them on the basis of the underlying body part they are superimposed on.
Head and Forehead Jewelry Try Ons
You can offer virtual try on for head, forehead, and hair jewelry such as jewelry headbands, forehead pendants, headpieces, tiaras, crowns, etc. The AI will scan the head and face of the user and place the digital 3D model of the jewelry in the intended place.
Face Jewelry Try Ons
These tryons place jewelry like earrings, nose pins, noserings, septum rings, and any other jewelry meant for any part of the face. This even includes the latest facial jewelry that runs across the face. Here too, the tryon technology scans the human head and face to place the digital jewelry try on where it belongs.
Neck Jewelry Try On
Brands can offer jewelry tryon for the neck area which includes necklaces, pendants, torc, chokers, etc. The models will be placed around the neck of the user and display the same behavior as that of real neck jewelry.
Hand Jewelry Try On
For this tryon, the AI scans the hand of the user and places jewelry on it. These pieces of jewelry can be a ring, bracelets, bangles, armlets, metal watches, and any other ornament worn on the hand.
All these tryons can be experienced in either of two ways – app-based virtual tryon and web-based virtual tryon. Let’s see which one is better.
What are app-based and web-based Virtual Jewelry Try On? Which one is better?
The application-based or app-based virtual tryons take the application development route. Businesses need to develop a dedicated application or integrate it into their existing application for users to access their AR tryon experiences.
Hence, users need to download the application, open it to scan the respective body part, and try the digital jewelry.
This can prove a great disincentive to the customer as the increasing number of applications are flooding the market and consuming their limited smartphone memory.
While on the other hand, web-based virtual jewelry tryons directly run on the inbuilt web browser in users’ mobile. They don’t need to download any application and can directly access the experience. All they need is the link to the experience, that’s it.
The evolution in networking and communication technology has made web-based experiences much more robust, reliable, and stable for a high-quality experience. This gives them a significant upper hand over app-based AR tryon experiences.
Web-based virtual jewelry tryons offer a lot of benefits to businesses and users. Our next section is all about discussing the myriad benefits virtual tryons bring to businesses.
Web-based Virtual Jewelry Try On: Single Solution to Multiple Business Challenges
The jewelry industry has its fair share of challenges such as the absence of an omnichannel strategy, lack of real-time consumer data, tracking the ever-changing user behavior, customer loyalty, technology adoption, etc. Surprisingly, WebAR jewelry tryons have a lot to contribute on all these fronts.
Realistic trials for expensive jewelry products with zero risk involvement
One of the major concerns of the jewelry industry is the protection and safety of their expensive product, and more importantly, the safety of their customers and of themselves.
Hence, deploying AR jewelry tryon is one of the best solutions that offer a realistic product trial experience with complete safety. The users can try them anytime and anywhere without worrying the theft, loss, or damage to the product.
Offers an enriched and satisfying online shopping experience
With only 4-5 percent of the total sales coming from online channels, there is great potential to explore and expand jewelry businesses in this space.
AR Jewelry Tryon is the best way known till now. With three-dimensional and AI-backed product trials businesses can offer realistic trials right in the home of the user and take online jewelry shopping to a whole new level.
Users can try the product as if they are really wearing it, get convinced, and buy it right away through the online portal. Thus, it will help businesses tap a huge audience craving online jewelry shopping and expand their business exponentially.
Saves Time and Effort for both businesses and users
Moreover, AR Jewelry Tryons also help jewelry businesses complement their offline sales. As these experiences can be deployed over the internet across different channels and platforms. Brands can deploy the Tryon experience of their collections as part of marketing and branding campaigns. Users can get a good look at the collection, try them and enter the store with a fair idea of what to expect from the collection.
This was not true for 2D jewelry images and videos shared over the internet till now and this is one of the reasons why online shopping failed to win users’ confidence till now.
Bringing back the social shopping experience
Another component that AR Jewelry Tryon adds to online shopping is the social component. The social component is the one where users involve other users and have a collective shopping experience.
This got lost during the two-dimensional non-interactive online shopping as users could only explore and shop in isolation. However, with AR Jewelry Tryon, they can involve their friends and family member and let them try the product on themselves. They can get their opinion and make a better decision.
This also helps users appreciate the brand for innovative value addition.
3D Product Visualization and Digital Trials to drive customer loyalty
WebAR-enabled product try-ons offer a personalized and transparent shopping experience. This comes from the real-time body analysis that varies from person to person and the overlaying of true-to-life digital 3D models that identically replicate the real-world piece of jewelry.
Thereby, building trust and confidence for a loyal audience base while driving more sales and reducing returns. This is exactly what is reflected in the statistics we shared in the first segment of this blog. Not to mention, the huge competitive advantage that comes along with your AR strategy.
Easy shareability across channels for comprehensive data analysis and omnichannel strategy
WebAR Jewelry Try-ons are super simple to deploy across your sales channels. You can use it to offer in-store product trials, online virtual trials on e-commerce websites, your social media profiles, or anywhere you want.
It stores all the real-time data of all such customer engagement in a single place to give you your very own comprehensive database and related analysis. Thereby, helping you chart out an omnichannel sales strategy that integrates and directs all your efforts in a focused manner.
Camera strategy as per consumers changing behavior
A survey by Oracle found that 47% of sellers recognize that sales strategies involving smartphones increased the average value of their user’s shopping baskets whether online or offline.
Consumers are increasingly becoming tech-savvy. They spent more time online, share their experience with their social network, and eagerly search the internet for their products, services, and their reviews. Also, they appreciate the brand for employing any technological innovation that makes their job easy.
That is why deploying a virtual jewelry tryon experience directly helps your jewelry business. It brings the much-touted smartphone camera strategy to engage and influence audience and drive up your 94 percent higher conversion rates.
Given these benefits, no wonder you would be wondering how you can get your own Web AR try-on and start offering jewelry tryons to your customer.
How can you create your Web-based Virtual Jewelry Try On for faster deployment?
If you are newly introduced to AR, then we would highly recommend the Vossle AR platform. Vossle is one of the market-leading AR platforms that helps you create AR-based virtual try-on experiences without writing a single line of code.
You just need to create your account, upload 3D models of your jewelry, complete settings, and other configurations and submit. It takes hardly a few minutes.
Plus, whether you are a big or small brand, established or starting up, it is very easy to integrate the Vossle AR experience into your existing and new business strategies.
Once you submit the details, you get a link and a QR code for your Web AR experience. This makes it easy to share with your customers. They will click on the link that will open up the camera of their device.
The AI behind the experience will scan users’ images through the camera and accurately place the digital products on their designated body parts. So easy.
If you are still not convinced, reach out to us, and we will guide you through. See you in the email, hello@vossle.ai.