Key points:
-
Increases Sales & Confidence: Interactive 3D tools like 360-degree spins and AR increase purchase intent by 64%, boosting conversion rates and average order values (as seen with EQ3 and Yardistry) while reducing returns.
-
Cuts Production Costs: Virtual photography eliminates the need for physical prototypes and traditional photoshoots, saving companies like Riverside Furniture up to $100,000 annually.
-
Scales Customization: Software allows brands to showcase infinite product variations (colors, fabrics, configurations) without manufacturing a single item, bridging the gap between digital browsing and in-store interaction.
As the furniture e-commerce landscape becomes more competitive, standing out to customers is vital.
3D product visualization software is one of the best ways to enhance a product listing and the overall shopping experience through explorative buying, customizable options, AR product configurations, and more. It's also a win for business owners, offering cost savings in product visualization and faster iterations. Let's explore 3D product visualization and its effect on furniture e-commerce content optimization in further detail.
What is 3D product visualization?
3D product visualization involves creating a digital three-dimensional representation of a product being sold. It allows customers to see and interact with the product, inspecting it from every angle, and even customize its color, texture, form, and size. This process gives greater customer control and sets proper expectations of what they will buy before making the final purchase at checkout.
Implementing 3D product representations through photorealistic rendering has had a positive effect on various market verticals and consumers, but it has become even more important for big-ticket items, such as products in the furniture, electronics, and automotive industries. Customers want to be sure they are making a good investment that will last them a long while. And when customers feel confident about a purchase, they are more likely to recommend the brand to others and effectively boost social proof.
Techniques and tools for 3D product visualization
3D modeling software like 3ds Max and Maya have enabled businesses to create product visuals focusing on aspects including its physical body, UV mapping, texture, opacity, and reflection. The next step of the process, rendering, involves digital lighting setups, cameras, and high-quality materials, all used to depict how the final product would look in reality, accentuating the product's physical properties and features, and ensuring brand consistency.
In essence, rendering software photographs each pixel of the image, calculates its color, and tracks rays of light as they would bounce around in real life. There's quite a lot of physics involved, and in many cases, the process takes a while, even on the fastest computers.
Luckily, this is not the case when using Cylindo, Chaos's all-in-one 3D product visualization platform. With Cylindo's 360 Viewer, you render 32 frames of the product, where the product itself rotates for 360 degrees and the camera is static. This process proves to be much faster. For the rendering of products, there are five pre-done lighting setups and three camera heights from which you can choose. But this can also be modified according to your requests.
5 advantages of 3D product visualization
Here is how 3D visualization technology empowers brands to thrive.
1. Drive Higher Conversions & AOV
Interactive experiences effectively close the gap between browsing and buying. By keeping users engaged longer, you significantly boost performance metrics.
-
The Impact: Purchase intent increases by up to 64% when users interact with 3D visuals.
-
Real-World Success: EQ3 implemented AR and saw a 36% increase in conversion rates and an 88% increase in Average Order Value (AOV). Outdoor brand Yardistry doubled their e-commerce sales YoY.
2. Slash Production Costs & Time-to-Market
Traditional photography is slow, expensive, and logistically complex. Virtual photography allows you to iterate instantly without building physical prototypes or renting studios.
-
The Impact: Eliminate the cost of manufacturing samples, shipping logistics, and set construction.
-
Real-World Success: Riverside Furniture saved $100,000 annually and eliminated print catalog costs by switching to 3D visualization. FEST similarly saved thousands of euros in photography expenses while speeding up their launch cycles.
3. Scale "Mass Customization" Effortlessly
Shoppers expect personalization, but photographing every fabric and finish combination is impossible. 3D software lets you showcase infinite variations from a single master asset.
-
The Impact: Display millions of potential configurations (undecillions, to be exact) without stocking inventory.
-
Real-World Success: Montana Furniture digitally showcases over 70,000 configuration options, allowing customers to tailor complex modules to their exact style without a single physical photoshoot.
4. Build Trust & Reduce Returns
Furniture is a high-consideration purchase. High-fidelity rendering (4K zoom and 360-degree spins) replicates the in-store "tactile" experience, ensuring customers know exactly what they are buying.
-
The Impact: Accurate representation of textures, grains, and dimensions sets realistic expectations, which directly lowers return rates.
-
Real-World Success: Hydeline uses 4K zoom to show off premium leather grains, while Heal’s saw immediate growth by letting customers "place" sofas in their living rooms via AR, removing size/fit anxiety.
5. Empower Omnichannel Marketing & Retailers
Your visual assets need to work harder. 3D visualization creates a centralized library of assets that can be deployed across every channel, from Instagram ads to dealer websites.
-
The Impact: Instantly generate lifestyle imagery, automated PDF spec sheets, and syndicated content for retailer networks.
-
Real-World Success: Swoon Editions generates photorealistic lifestyle scenes for email and social media at scale. Palliser strengthens dealer relationships by providing high-quality, consistent 3D assets that help their retail partners sell more.
Bridge the gap between digital browsing and reality
Give your customers 360-degree spins, 4K zoom, and AR tools that build the confidence to buy.
Enhancing customer experience through 3D product visualization
You may still be wondering how exactly 3D product visualization enhances the customer shopping experience. There are a few key things to consider that 3D product visualization excels in: showcasing the product value, offering increased engagement, and unlimited customization options.
1. Enhancing the shopping experience
One of its strongest aspects is visualization of usage that demonstrates the product's features in action (i.e. its durability, value, and functionality) through dynamic presentations like 360 view renders, videos and animations.
Personalized experiences can then be created in the form of real-time customization, which boosts customer satisfaction. And here's something more: engaging visuals are more likely to be shared, increasing brand visibility.
2. Increased customer engagement and interactivity
These captivating visuals not only engage your potential customers giving them a clear sense of the product, but are more likely to boost social sharing. The buzz created on social media opens a window of customer preferences giving businesses a glimpse into which product features customers are excited about and which need improvement.
3. Customizable product options and configurators
In 3D product visualization for e-commerce, customization for ecommerce can often be overlooked but is absolutely critical for customer satisfaction, making it easy for customers to design their perfect products. User-friendly 3D product configurators contribute to boosting customer satisfaction by meeting specific needs, which increases customer loyalty.
One of the major advantages of Cylindo Studio is that it greatly reduces the costs and time required for traditional photography, increasing purchase intent by up to 64%, while offering customizable templates that are consistent across all channels. And just how much customization is possible? 10 to the 36th power, or an undecillion.
“With Cylindo, you can enjoy stunning 4K zoom to examine product details closely, 360-degree spins for complete views, and a product configurator to show all of the different material options. As all of the frames are pre-rendered, it delivers super fast performance. Cylindo Studio also produces lifestyle imagery, featuring products in realistic scenes with multiple camera angles to show how they look in real-world settings.”
- Jostein Pedersen, VP Product - 3D Commerce, Chaos
Trends and innovations in 3D product visualization
As technology races ahead, the world of 3D product visualization is welcoming in some cool trends that are changing the way we do our online shopping, allowing customers to see and interact with products in new and exciting ways, and pushing businesses to rethink their ecommerce strategy and implement these innovations across their marketing channels.
Augmented reality (AR)
Augmented reality has quickly entered the furniture industry as a technology helping empower businesses to elevate their product listing through immersive customer experiences. AR solutions enable customers to explore products in a virtual space for a deeper understanding of what they are buying before they finalize their purchase.
Virtual Reality (VR)
Virtual reality technology is transforming 3D product visualization by offering immersive and interactive experiences that allow customers to explore products in a highly engaging manner. In the fashion and furniture industries, VR enables customers to virtually try on clothes or enter virtual showrooms to experience how a piece of furniture would look and fit in their space, enhancing their shopping experience and making it more personalized.
Integration of AI and machine learning
AI has quickly entered the furniture e-commerce space and is offering solutions to improve the customer experience and drive business growth. By integrating AI, furniture brands can streamline their operations, personalize customer experiences and optimize marketing strategies, in turn resulting in higher ROI.
AI tools are increasingly being used for product visualization and lifestyle imagery creation, with 56% of furniture businesses leveraging AI to automatically generate or modify images. Furthermore, 52% utilize AI for image recognition and classification, while 42% use it for real-time customization of product imagery. With 61% of furniture businesses already adopting AI for customer support and recommendations, it looks like AI in furniture e-commerce is here to stay and will only continue to grow in its adoption.
Dive deep into the trends
Would you like to gain an even better understanding of the current e-commerce landscape in the furniture industry and gain expert insights on what will give you a competitive edge? Make sure to check out this whitepaper: Tech trends impacting the furniture industry: from AI to 3D product visualization.
Customizable products and the role of 3D visualization
We've already touched a bit on the benefits customization brings potential customers through 3D visualization. But let's explore how these benefits directly enhance customer satisfaction and drive sales even further.
For British furniture retailer Heal's, sofas aren't just products—they're a passion. To communicate the level of quality and beautiful craftsmanship that goes into their creation across to their potential customers, they relied on Cylindo to showcase unlimited customization of all available upholstery and finishes in 360-degree views.
“By having Chaos Cylindo, we bring the website experience closer to the in-store experience. Allowing the customer to visualize and interact with the product in 3D increases the sales we can make.”
- Mark Hammond, Head of E-commerce, Heal's
This quickly resulted in sofas becoming the best-performing category on their website. Heal's also witnessed reduced returns and maximized its ROI by working with Cylindo's Customer Success Team.
Ever wondered how QR codes can transform furniture shopping into a fun and interactive experience? Wayfair has the answer. Customers can engage with Wayfair's Digital Design Studio either through guidance from designers at Wayfair’s Design Bar or by discovering it on their own. Upon approaching the kiosk, they place product cards on a glass tabletop to see photorealistic visualizations on a screen, allowing them to mock up and customize a living room with matching furniture, compare products, and purchase items via QR codes on the cards. Learn more about Wayfair's Digital Design Studio and how they have approached customizable product options with the help of Chaos Vantage.
Embracing the future of 3D product visualization
In the early days of e-commerce content optimization, 3D product visualization was a novelty, but it has since evolved into a powerful tool that creates a perfect harmony between digital and physical shopping experiences. We've defined what 3D product visualization is, the techniques and tools involved in the process, and the many advantages it brings to e-commerce businesses.
Looking ahead, the trends show us that the future of product visualization looks promising, with advancements in AR, VR, and AI leading the way. These technologies will continue shaping the shopping experience for customers, making it more fun, immersive, and personalized. As a 3D visualization company, we are thrilled to be a part of that journey! We invite you to join us in defining the future of visualization.
Book a free demo today to see how Cylindo can enhance your omnichannel customer experiences, reduce costs, and help boost your bottom line. We encourage you to explore and learn more about all Chaos products in order to find the solution that will best suit your workflow and drive you to create your best work.
