Buying furniture on-line can be difficult. It is hard to imagine how a chair, couch, or lamp may look in a room. Will its colors clash with the other furniture? Will it be too large for the intended space? Overstock.com's new omni-channel augmented reality (AR) and 3D customer experience helps answer those questions. With this industry-leading AR functionality, shoppers can now seamlessly view true-to-life size 3D renderings of thousands of products in their room with AR no matter where they are shopping. While Overstock previously had these capabilities on its apps, its new partnership with Seek will allow these capabilities on all platforms.
Earlier this week, Overstock announced this partnership with Seek, an AR industry leader specialized in web-based AR. This partnership allows Overstock to expand its AR and 3D reach to 100% of mobile customers. Whether they are shopping on Overstock's award winning apps, browsing the mobile web, or using the desktop site, all customers will be able to use Overstock's 3D models to make better purchasing decisions.
“At Overstock, we believe we are a technology company that innovates as technology develops in order to make the customer experience shopping on-line as convenient and easy as possible," says Sumit Goyal, Chief Digital Officer at Overstock.com. "With more than half of our customers shopping on mobile devices, we are constantly looking for opportunities to enhance the customer experience no matter how they shop and give our customers more confidence while shopping on-line."
Jon Cheney, Chief Executive Officer at Seek, added how important this feature is for the future of e-commerce: "I feel like we are doing a lot of good for the world. We are trying to make e-commerce better. One statistic that a lot of people might not know is that, on average, 30% of everything bought on-line is returned. That is a big number - that actually represents a $400 billion problem on an annual basis. One of the top reasons for returning an item is that it was not what the customer expected - if we can reduce that $400 billion of waste by even 20% that is fantastic. We have saved a lot of money and headaches. A lot of companies are going to be better off and the consumers are going to be happier. That is the larger issue we are trying to solve here."
"This partnership between Seek and Overstock constitutes one of the biggest steps towards mass adoption of AR to date," Cheney added. "With a retailer of the caliber and size of Overstock taking the lead, consumers will begin to expect the same level of innovation from others."
Any e-commerce company out there that wants to give their customers better information to help them make better buying decisions should check out what Seek is doing.
Click here for more information on Overstock.com.
Click here to learn more about Seek.
