A virtual showroom combines 3D, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to create an engaging shopping experience and lifelike product interactions. That’s crucial in a world where more than 60% of all shopping journeys begin online, according to Google, making digital first impressions more important than ever.
Throw in the fact that 80% of consumers feel more confident in purchases made with the help of AR, and the potential gains for furniture brands become clear. Virtual showrooms offer a powerful way to leverage changing buying habits and broaden a brand’s reach around the world. Here are the key points to know about virtual showrooms, and how they can benefit furniture companies of all stripes.
“For the furniture industry, virtual commerce offers diverse opportunities and opens up a completely new dimension in customer acquisition and retention.”
-IMM Cologne Mag
What is a virtual showroom?
A virtual showroom is a digital simulation of a physical showroom created with 3D, AR, and VR technology. A host of brands, including BMW, IKEA, and Amazon, use virtual showrooms as an integral part of the customer experience. By allowing users to explore, personalize, and interact with products, view them from all angles, and even visualize them in their own surroundings, a virtual showroom brings buyers closer to potential purchases than ever before. Designed for engagement, the experience can match – and, in many ways, better – that of a real-world showroom.
A virtual showroom transports customers directly into your world. By eliminating travel requirements while offering digital buying experiences that feel real, customers benefit from immediacy and convenience. At the same time, virtual showrooms allow brands to showcase their entire product range, in all configuration options, without space restrictions. For furniture companies, which have highly configurable product offerings, this not only maximizes product range potential but also unlocks the benefits of real-time customization.
How a virtual showroom surpasses physical stores
Virtual showrooms are a fast-growing trend, with the market valued at $4.55 billion in 2023 and projected to reach $18.31 billion by 2030. After first appearing in 2016, virtual showrooms exploded in popularity with the onset of the pandemic. As in-store shopping hit a dramatic low, brands had to pivot, enabling shoppers to browse and purchase from the comfort and safety of their homes. Most quickly realized they could offer an immersive, seamless, and convenient shopping experience through virtual showrooms.
Research by Shopify has found that offering customers 3D and AR experiences increases conversion rates by up to 94%. Furthermore, as proliferation has increased, shoppers across different sectors are increasingly demanding the technology as part of the customer journey. According to a survey by Google, 43% of smartphone shoppers in the US already expect all beauty brands to use AR, while 47% of smartphone shoppers expect all automotive brands to do the same. The research concluded that, “AR and visual search help customers not only better understand your products, but to see how they fit into their lives.” For furniture companies, that capability is key.
Buyers have come to rely on immersive shopping tools to help make more confident purchasing decisions. A virtual showroom takes that immersion to the next level. But it also offers customers advantages over and above what even physical showrooms can do:
- Virtual showrooms allow customers to instantly view and trial all products in a brand's catalog. For a furniture business, that means displaying every piece in its ideal context and allowing buyers to configure attributes like color and material in real time. They can then visualize their chosen design in their own space to check for fit and aesthetic match.
- With virtual showrooms, there are no restrictions on product availability, store proximity, or opening hours. Shoppers can explore any product they want at any time. They also allow buyers to trial products thoroughly before buying, which is especially helpful for furniture brands with longer buying journeys and product consideration cycles.
- Once created, a virtual showroom can live online indefinitely. Unlike physical showrooms that have capacity restrictions, businesses can upload unlimited virtual products online to display to their customers and update their catalogs in real time. Showcasing new product variants or configuration options becomes a cinch.
- Virtual showrooms allow brands to provide a personalized and highly memorable customer experience. As a result, furniture businesses can increase brand awareness and consideration, generate interest, and gain an edge in the ultra-competitive retail and ecommerce space.
Using virtual showrooms to maximum effect
Brands deploy a virtual showroom to provide an end-to-end immersive customer experience to shoppers. They allow buyers to view and interact with products from whenever and wherever they choose. They also enable businesses to offer enhanced product listings that present users with all the additional content they might need, in context. This includes pricing details, exchange policy information, demo videos, buyer reviews, and catalogs, while also providing shopping assistance when required.
“The direct customer interactions made possible through virtual encounters present unique ways in which retailers can engage and learn about them.”
-Forbes Magazine
The technologies that power a virtual showroom
The three main technologies used to create virtual showrooms are 3D, AR, and VR. Different designs and build types exist, but they all employ 3D product models as the starting point. That’s why it’s essential brands have high-quality 3D models to work with, in order to provide lifelike immersive experiences for customers. Depending on expertise, resource, and complexity, that may mean creating them in-house. For most furniture companies, however, working with an expert technology partner ensures the models created are of the requisite quality and optimized for their intended use.
When creating a virtual showroom, there are trade-offs to be aware of in the various technology options:
- 360-degree images of a 3D environment can run on mobile devices, potentially offering a wider audience reach. However, the level of immersion and product visualization is lower than with some of the alternative choices.
- Fully virtual environments offer a much greater sense of immersion for customers and high-quality product visualization. Reach is limited, however, by the fact that users need a headset in order to access them.
- Realistic desktop applications represent a best-of-both-worlds solution. Powered by AR, they offer broad reach, lifelike 3D brand environments, and immersive product visualizations. By superimposing digital content on the user’s own surroundings, the customer journey is frictionless and grounded in the real world.
These technologies are not mutually exclusive and next-generation headsets such as Apple Vision Pro combine elements of all of these to deliver enhanced immersive experiences. With Apple, Meta and others investing heavily in the space, the direction of travel is clear. For any business looking to create a virtual showroom, the key is to choose an experienced technology partner who can guide them on the right solution for their specific needs.
“People want both real and virtual choices. This is where we are.”
-Forbes Magazine
How IKEA uses virtual showrooms to stay ahead
IKEA has long been a pioneer in the use of 3D and augmented reality engagement techniques. The IKEA Place app was among the first to let shoppers visualize furniture in their own spaces and helped bring the experience to a broad audience. Using just their mobile phone, Place enables buyers to explore pieces from all angles and instantly preview them in their homes.
Building on that success, IKEA Kreativ represents a further evolution of furniture selling. Launched in 2023 and powered by virtual showroom technology, Kreativ offers two different customer experiences:
- The first is an interactive digital showroom where customers can add IKEA products to an empty virtual room template. The app then enables them to personalize pieces and experiment with different stylings and arrangements. Alternatively, users can start with a fully designed room template, and then customize it to their own tastes.
- The second experience is the Scan Your Room feature. This option allows users to add IKEA products to an image of their own space, where they appear to scale, reflect the true-to-life lighting of the room, and interact with existing real-life objects. This gives shoppers the ability to get a realistic view of how purchases will mesh – or clash – with their existing furniture and design.
With these functionalities, IKEA Kreativ delivers on the promise of virtual showrooms by offering an engaging, convenient, and highly personalized shopping experience at the broadest scale.
How to bring the benefits of a virtual showroom to your business
Virtual showrooms offer a wide array of advantages to furniture companies and their customers. Firms can exponentially broaden their reach amongst both existing customers and prospects, offering a premium showroom experience that is available wherever and whenever they want it. By staking out their own commercial real estate in the cloud, with immersive visualization and configuration options and integrated AI capabilities, firms place themselves at the forefront of a powerful new buying, selling, and branding marketplace.
For businesses looking to secure a competitive advantage by creating their own virtual showroom, a simple, three-step process can help them get started:
- Discuss requirements with an experienced technology partner with expertise in creating, managing, and deploying immersive experiences at scale.
- Identify objectives, project scope, and specific goals at the outset, as well as setting expectations.
- Develop a pipeline strategy for high quality 3D product models that are created according to best practice and optimized for use in virtual showrooms.
From that basis, the exact shape and scale of the project can be defined and made reality.
The technology is ready, and leading brands are already reaping the benefits. For furniture companies looking to adapt to a digital-first shopping landscape, virtual showrooms offer a chance to not just keep up but to thrive.
