In the coming months, many consumers will go online to buy new garden furniture sets; in 2020, 34% purchased or looked at garden furniture online, which will not be less in 2022. But purchasing new garden furniture online can be tricky; the size of a product is often hard to estimate with just pictures.
Garden Connect introduces an Augmented Reality extension for webshops so consumers can see for themselves what garden furniture looks like in their own living space. “With the help of a link on the product page, consumers can virtually place the garden furniture set in their garden using only their smartphone. This makes the purchase of new garden furniture a lot easier,” says Edwin Meijer on behalf of Garden Connect.
AR leads to more online sales
“A lot of research has already been done into the effectiveness of AR in webshops. The use of AR increases conversion rates by about 94%. This is not surprising because consumers get a true picture of whether a product fits their home or garden.”
There are already several webshops using AR to display garden furniture. “Garden furniture is an expensive purchase, so it was a great place to start with for AR. Aside from furniture, we have also created a pot & plant configurator which is already live and running. It allows visitors to choose a pot and a plant and place the combination in his living room. The visitor can then add the chosen combination to his shopping cart with just one click.”
AR models
“Our ambition is to help every webshop in the garden industry to use AR, even if they are not on our platform. It is a new technology that fits well with garden centre products because they are visually strong and sometimes quite expensive. In addition to garden furniture, this includes barbecues, decorations, and plants.”
Every user gets access to the database of AR models: “The biggest challenge in implementing AR is creating all the necessary models. Because we have more than 300 shops that partly sell the same products, we can organise this quickly. We already have more than 500 models of well-known brands available, and that number is growing rapidly.”
So what is Augmented Reality (AR)?
Augmented Reality allows website visitors to virtually place products in their own home or garden via their smartphone since it combines digital images with reality. It is ideal for consumers to get an impression of whether that set of garden furniture will look good in their garden or on their balcony. Almost every Android and iOS phone supports AR.
The Augmented Reality solution is accessible to everyone, even if they do not use the Garden Connect online platform.
More information
For more information, please visit www.gardenconnect.com/augmented-reality or call +31 20 700 8250.
