The post-pandemic market has certainly become more competitive for brands selling mainly online. Many traditional sellers have been forced to expand the omnichannel sales model. There is something to fight for, we experience a housing boom and global urban population growth. The global furniture market size exceeded $ 545.78 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to a projected value of around $ 650.7 billion by 2027. Therefore, among others furniture brands are changing and investing in the development or building of new sales tools in online channels, with an emphasis on mobile first.
Customer expectations for online shopping have changed very dynamically in the last few years, and the traffic in the store is mostly generated by mobile devices.
Being careful in choosing the right tools is highly recommended. The range of possibilities is large, companies implement from expensive mobile applications to simple web-based tools supporting the customer in the process of product presentation, choosing and buying it. The decision should depend not only on the budget but also on the offer and key value propositions. However, the main goal remains the same, which is to charm the customer with the product and the easy process leading to the purchase.
Scandic Sofa, together with Ar-range, has implemented several tools in its online store within 2 years:
360 photos.
All of them were created based on product 3d visualization. Thanks to this tools, the brand's customers independently adjust the furniture to their needs, seeing the preview in all possible variants.
One of the main distinguishing features of Scandic Sofas are
handcrafted furniture with great attention to detail and
wide range of fabrics with product personalization.
Since not all of these aspects have been fully utilized in the online tools so far, we developed an idea for changes that will help bring them out.
Brand differentiators
We know that the quality of the product visualization has a significant impact on sales in furniture e-commerce, we wanted to create images that will delight customers and make sure that they made the right choice. Our goal was to properly show the finishes, fabric textures and quality of the wood. An additional task was to refine the UI o UX in terms of the Mobile-First approach.
Unusual duet: quantity and quality
The first task was to develop a visualization concept. Due to the number of possible configurations, we knew that we had to unify the frames showing the products in close proximity and at the same time refine the light setting for each of them. We made a series of test renderings in various angles for the main categories: sofas, corner sofas and beds. After throwing a few dozen samples into the trash, together with the client, we selected 3 frames for each of the furniture categories. Appropriate framing, the light setting, helped us to bring out the greatest advantages and details of the furniture.
Our original script for automatic rendering creation generated over 60,000 images of furniture in three different frames and in all possible configurations within 2 days.
At the same time, we were working on refreshing the interface, which is to make it easier for users to use the mobile version of the configurator. We designed and tested prototypes on Figma, which is the favorite tool of our UI / UX designers.
Knowledge of the ecommerce platform
The next step was to code the new version, disable the previous configurator and integrate the new version with the store. Which went very smoothly, also thanks to the good knowledge of the customer's e-store environment.
It is worth adding that the Scandic Sofa configurator also has the function of seeing the furniture in Augmented Reality. For the client's needs, we have developed a way to use AR both from a computer, with the help of QR codes, and directly via mobile devices, without having to download any unnecessary external application. The Augmented Reality web function is extremely useful for companies selling large or difficult to deliver and return items (such as furniture brands).
AR allows buyers to place virtual products in target rooms or gardens using a smartphone. Thanks to this, the customer can see how a given product will fit into the environment in terms of aesthetics and dimensions.
The combination of all these functionalities and a refreshed appearance resulted in the configurator that you can see below or test here
The current Scandicsofa.pl configurator allows customers to customize over 60 products, in 13 types of fabrics, in 120 colors and 3 types of legs. All variants of the product are presented on 3 frames, attracting attention to details such as texture, solid or quilting. Each visualization should reflect the quality of work performed by designers, cutters, upholsterers, implementers and other trusted employees of scandicsofa.pl
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