Why eCommerce Sellers Must Adopt 3D To Compete and Win

Over the past few years eCommerce selling has continued to grow and evolve significantly. With the closure of physical stores during the Covid-19 pandemic and the increased demand for online shopping, eCommerce has experienced a massive boom. Many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have had to pivot to an online-only model to survive, while established online marketplaces and brands with a pre-existing online storefront have seen record sales. 

This eCommerce boom shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. In this crowded selling arena, brands have to find new and inventive ways to stand out from their competitors and showcase their products. Customers rely heavily on product imagery to make informed purchasing decisions. New technology such as 3D renderings, product configurators, and augmented and virtual reality has enhanced the online shopping experience, allowing customers to visualize products before making a purchase.

With the newfound shift towards digitization of the retail space, 3D content is becoming an essential part of the eCommerce selling strategy. Brands should focus on adopting 3D technology to ensure their eCommerce product catalog is stocked with stunning visual content; some that can only be created with a 3D content platform like imagine.io.

First, let’s dive deeper into exactly what 3D content creation is.

The use of 3D content in eCommerce selling has numerous benefits, including, improving the customer experience through features such as:

• Product Configurators
• Augmented Reality 
• 3D Renders

While also increasing engagement and reducing return rates. In addition, 3D content can help eCommerce retailers stand out in a crowded market and simplify the process of creating high-quality product visualizations.
With access to a team of skilled 3D graphic artists and digital stylists who model products and style settings/templates, eCommerce retailers can save both time and money compared to traditional studio photography.

3D content enhances the customer experience by providing a more immersive view of products. By presenting products in 3D, you're building trust with your customers by:

1. Allowing them to view products from all angles to get a better sense of their size, shape, and design.
2. Providing greater detail to help customers make more informed purchasing decisions and get a better understanding of the product's features and benefits.
3. Making the overall shopping experience more engaging and memorable. Customers now have the ability to interact with products in a way that feels more real, building stronger connections between the customer and your brand.
   
   

This increased trust also reduces the rate of returns during the online shopping process.

Importantly, 3D technology saves online retailers time and money. 3D platform's such as imagine.io are a cost-effective alternative to traditional studio photography as it allows users to customize products to their desired specifications before manufacturing and for those products to be continuously adapted regardless of season or collection. Rendering your product catalog with a platform like imagine.io has the potential to save your brand 90% in costs and 80% in time compared to traditional photography.

The online shopping space is crowded, retailers who are slow to incorporate innovative technology like 3D into their visual content strategy to showcase and sell their products risk falling behind. If you’re struggling to see the results you want when selling online, 3D is your answer. 

You now know how 3D content enhances the shopping experience for your customer but how do you add this content to your eCommerce selling strategy?

There is a variety of 3D content you can include in your strategy, here are the core types that can be created using imagine.io:

• Lifestyle imagery
• Silhouettes
• Vignettes
• Video 
• AR
• Product configurators

Incorporating these types of imagery provides your customer with a highly detailed and comprehensive understanding of your product from start to finish. This content can be used in a number of ways to boost online sales such as imagery throughout your website, on your social media, in your paid ad creative and more.

Culp Home Fashions, a division of Culp Inc., leveraged imagine.io’s 3D technology to reduce production hours, lower sampling costs, and streamline its mattress fabric designs. Digital prototypes created in the platform are now being used by mattress manufacturers to assess consumer reactions to designs before they are produced, helping to drive early innovation concepts. 

The technology has enabled customers to work with Culp in real-time, improving the efficiency and collaborative nature of the design process. With a vast number of potential fabric combinations, 360-degree product configurators have allowed Culp to create and showcase as many combinations as it wants to, an impossible feat with physical prototypes.

Incorporating 3D technology into their eCommerce selling strategy has not only reduced Culp's time to market, but has also made the company more environmentally friendly by minimizing the need for physical fabric samples. The platform has freed up more time for the team to flex their creative muscles. Using imagine.io 3D content studio has made Culp more collaborative, efficient, and green.