Today, buyers want engaging and hyper-personalized shopping experiences with ecommerce brands, with Forbes stating that 81% prefer to shop with companies that offer this as part of the buying journey. A 3D product configurator is a powerful digital tool that lets firms offer customers exactly this capability.
Key takeaways:
- A product configurator is an interactive tool that helps customers configure and visualize personalized products before buying them.
- Available as 2D and 3D configurators, these tools help improve customer journeys, product development, and sales.
- Companies like Enhance, ThreeKit, and 3D Source offer some of the most effective product configurators in the market.
One of the forces behind the rise of ecommerce was the convenience of letting customers shop from home – a trend that was supercharged by COVID-era lockdowns. However, an unintended consequence of this new trend was a corresponding rise in product return rates, bringing significant cost and logistic implications for businesses.
Shopping from home created a disconnect between what buyers saw on their screens and the reality of the product they were buying, with traditional 2D images, videos, and descriptions not always able to convey an item’s characteristics accurately – hence leading to increasing returns.
Online stores resorted to various approaches to try to remedy the issue, all of them imperfect. Some focused on providing professional product shots along with detailed product descriptions. The idea? To provide the customer with greater clarity about what they are buying.
Others, meanwhile, turned to product reviews, with the aim of improving customer confidence in purchases, and many ecommerce businesses use disclaimers such as “product color may differ” and “size may vary” to try to reduce the chance of items being sent back. But with returns reaching $743 billion in 2023, equivalent to 14.5% of all retail sales, the problem is both persistent and growing.
Now, technology provides a real solution, in the form of a 3D product configurator.
What is a 3D product configurator?
A 3D product configurator is an interactive tool that enables buyers to visualize products. Using lifelike 3D models, brands can let customers view the item from all angles, zoom, rotate, and gain the clearest picture possible of a prospective purchase.
Try a real-time product configuration and visualization experience from Enhance
What’s more, as the name suggests, a product configurator enables buyers to make changes to a product and see the results in real time, meaning sellers can display their full product range, including all customization options and variants, and offer customers the personalization capabilities they demand.
This improves three aspects of the ecommerce experience for customers:
- Buyer confidence
- Brand awareness
- Customer experience
For businesses, the granular analytics captured by the tool helps them gain a better understanding of individual preferences, enabling them to leverage that data to create personalized buying journeys.
Types of product configurator
There are two main types of product configurator to consider:
2D or static product configurators
These web-based tools show buyers a static image of the product, then allowing them to customize the image. Buyers can change product colors, designs, and finishes, depending on the options offered by the brand. However, they cannot view the product from different angles.
3D Product configurators
A 3D product visualization tool allows buyers to customize lifelike 3D models. Consumers can change product designs, sizes, materials, textures, and finishes and even alter individual components, depending on the configuration options set by the retailer or manufacturer. They can also rotate products to see how they look from all angles.
A 3D product configurator provides shoppers with additional transparency, agency, and control when making buying decisions. They allow buyers to gain a comprehensive understanding of a product before making a purchase, mimicking the tactility and clarity of an in-store experience, and in many ways bettering it.
One-off purchase vs. subscription model
In addition to the type of product configurator that best suits a brand’s needs, companies also need to consider the pros and cons of different purchase models.
A product configurator can be bought ‘off the shelf,’ meaning a one-off payment to incorporate the tool, which then lives in a brand’s web properties. This can be beneficial in terms of keeping the upfront investment minimized, and the standard features offered should be suitable for basic needs.
An alternative option is a subscription model, which brings the benefits of ongoing updates from the technology provider – ensuring the tool is kept optimized, minimizing the chance of compatibility issues caused by hardware or web infrastructure advances, and with technical support on hand when needed. And as this model offers monthly payment options, the initial outlay is within reach of any budget.
3 reasons to add a product configurator to ecommerce stores
Here are three key ways ecommerce brands can benefit from a product configurator:
1.Create engaging customer journeys
Ecommerce businesses compete with social media, email, and a host of other platforms for customer attention. That’s why it’s crucial to ensure that shoppers who do visit their sites are not lost due to uninspiring and unengaging buyer journeys.
Integrating a product configurator into the buying process can increase customer engagement by up to 66%. By deploying these tools to allow online buyers to interact with and customize products to their preferences, brands can offer an engaging buying experience that captures customer attention.
The most advanced product configurators incorporate augmented reality (AR) tech to add an additional layer of interaction and immersion to the buying experience. With AR, buyers can use their mobile devices to tailor products in the configurator, and then visualize them life-size in their own surroundings.
2.Increase customer satisfaction
Online shoppers make quick purchases when buying small products online, but ecommerce stores selling high-value products like furniture involve longer sales cycles. In these cases, the customer journeys involve more research, comparison, and consideration. Confidence in buying decisions can be low, and if the process is not seamless or the results are disappointing, customer satisfaction is negatively impacted.
Integrating a product configurator in the buying process helps with all these issues. It allows consumers to view lifelike renderings of their chosen products in real time and in different orientations, and even visualize them in their own homes. This provides a comprehensive view of the product, increasing customer confidence and enabling quicker buying decisions. This is evidenced in the fact that product configurators can lead to a reduction in return rates of up to 80%, driven by the additional transparency and accurate expectations a product configurator affords to customers.
3.Aid product ideation
Brands will use ecommerce analytics to understand buyer preferences as more customers demand personalized products. Businesses that add a product configurator to their buyer journeys will enjoy deeper insights into consumer choices and optimal configurations.
When shoppers use a product configurator, the tool captures a wealth of data about their tastes – for example, a preference for certain colors, or materials. Brands can leverage this information in a number of ways, identifying trends early and predicting patterns, and understanding buying habits. This, in turn, enables firms to make better-informed choices when it comes to product development, as well as stock, logistics, promotions, and marketing.
Guidance for effective product configurator integration
Here are five key considerations for brands seeking to implement a product configurator in their operations:
Develop rules
Rules set how the tool captures information, makes decisions, and determines outputs automatically. They can be as simple as equations on Excel spreadsheets and logical expressions, or as complex as product requirements or code.
Excel-based rules are the simplest to create, given the availability of the software, making this an appealing budget option. However, they require advanced Excel capabilities, and continual manual updates.
Logical expressions or codes need experienced professionals to create them, often requiring significant time and investment to get right. As such, this option is only suitable for brands with the necessary in-house IT expertise.
One way to bypass these hurdles is for companies to partner with an expert technology provider such as Enhance, who have the necessary capabilities and solutions to enable swift integration.
Focus on user interface
The user interface (UI) provides buyers with text boxes, images, buttons, and more, to interact with and enter data. It should optimized to be intuitive and easy to use and navigate, ensuring all necessary data fields are included.
Many product configurators go a step further to make product visualization more interactive, such as displaying step-by-step guidance for configurations or providing additional information on demand.
Prioritize realistic 3D visualizations
Once buyers enter their preferences in the product configurator, the tool updates their chosen product and displays the results in real time. Shoppers can then interact with the 3D model in the various ways already touched upon.
As the 3D model is the foundation of this process, it is important that firms invest in producing high quality models in order to provide the most lifelike product representation possible and show items in the best possible light. To do so, brands should ensure their models:
- Are realistic
- Contain visual representations of all data entered
- Are optimized for interaction and user experience
- Follow best practice guidance on size, polygon count, AR optimization and other technical aspects
Streamline workflows
A product configurator of any type needs streamlined workflows to function consistently. As such, businesses must have professionals dedicated to this aspect of their operation. These experts should be tasked with overseeing the selection, generation, development, and review of product configuration options.
Report, audit, and diagnose issues
The above steps help businesses implement product configurators effectively, but as with any tool, ongoing maintenance to ensure optimal operation is a must. Companies must appoint dedicated professionals to generate usage reports and audits, while also ensuring ongoing oversight to promptly identify and rectify issues. Implementing a product configurator from a specialist technology partner can mitigate many of these requirements.
3 best online product configurator tools
Enhance XR
Enhance offers a web-based 3D product configurator suitable for ecommerce businesses of all sizes. Enhance’s solution enables customers to view products in 2D or 3D, alter spatial elements through modular configurations, and change colors, materials, textures, and more. Buyers can then instantly visualize the personalized product in their own environment via AR.
This no-code solution is designed to be simple and seamless, enabling firms to create immersive product experiences in under thirty seconds just by uploading a 3D model. Offering a world-class viewer with built-in AR capability, advanced analytics, and a host of customization functionalities, this powerful but versatile tool is designed to bring interactive configuration and visualization experiences to any business.
ThreeKit
Like Enhance, ThreeKit allows shoppers to view and customize products. Buyers can change product colors, materials, and shapes, and rotate, pan, and zoom items. In addition, integrated product data storage helps with asset management.
Ideal for businesses with large inventories, ThreeKit allows enterprises to create hyper-realistic images from design files and enables integration with other popular platforms.
3D Source
Catering to businesses large and small, 3D source is a cloud-based platform that allows users to adapt a 3D element for product configurator software. The tool enables rule-based configuration, cost, and pricing calculations and also facilitates real-time product visualizations.
3D Source is accessible through Windows Operating Software-based systems, Android and iOS. It can integrate with multiple ecommerce platforms and is designed to work alongside planning software and CRMs.
Staying ahead of the curve with a product configurator
Businesses are now offering product customizations to stand apart from competitors. The scope to gain a competitive advantage still exists, but as consumer demand for personalization options continues to fuel adoption, product configurators will become standard features of ecommerce platforms – meaning businesses who fail to act swiftly risk being left behind.
Integrating a product configurator brings a host of benefits, for both ecommerce sellers and their customers. By creating the kind of hyper-personalized, engaging, and memorable purchasing journeys buyers increasingly demand, brands can ensure they increase revenue, reduce returns, and maximize the potential of their full product range.
To bring live product configuration to your business, talk to an expert today
