Cyber Monday is the time for shoppers to get a good deal ahead of the holiday season. With millions of people surfing the web on Cyber Monday, hunting for the best deals on Apple Airpods, robotic vacuums, or a bigger Smart TV, the pre-holiday shopping spree presents a massive influx of eCommerce traffic.
But it can also mean a huge opportunity cost for any retailers not on top of their digital game by launching campaigns such as promotional emails and ads, and ensuring inventory can accommodate the high demand. Since Cyber Monday retail happens nearly 100% online rather than in-store, shoppers rely on product visuals to support their purchase decisions. Brands need to make their products stand out during this festive visual barrage.
How eCommerce brands can get their share of Cyber Monday action
Nearly 100 million shoppers made purchases on Cyber Monday last year, the National Retail Federation shared. The 2022 metrics are projected to top those of 2021 as more companies have tuned up their purchase process to be more user friendly. This consumer-focused approach has become a necessity to win in the market after online customer behavior patterns and demographics shifted during the pandemic.
Retailers with a seamless, immersive customer experience, like Amazon, are the number one performers during Cyber Week with 17.7% of the US market share. And tech products remain the best sellers on Cyber Monday. According to USA TODAY, the top three best-selling goods during this period include Apple Ipods Pro, Revlon’s One-Step Hair Dryer and Volumizer, and the iRobot Roomba i6+ robotic vacuum.
Brands can win their share of this shopper market by offering exclusive deals, driving a sense of urgency through countdown clocks, offering free gifts with a purchase, and creating immersive product experiences, like 3D and AR ads, that boost shopper confidence.
Retailers that stick to static 2D product images during this retail frenzy risk losing the attention of shoppers, missing valuable sale opportunities, and losing customers outright to more innovative brands.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are opportunities for innovative brand activation. Retail brands that build intent ahead of time steer more traffic to their site. Through digital campaigns, typically including email blasts, newsletters, social media (like Facebook and Instagram), and paid advertising content, retailers can build up customer anticipation and intent to purchase.
Through 3D and AR technology, brands can launch innovative campaigns such as an AR Snap Lens for a specific product to differentiate their customer experience and capture more of the market.
Once potential customers are on their site, the same 3D product visuals can be implemented to capture their attention, increase engagement, and the likelihood of conversion.
Brands that grab the attention of BFCM shoppers, and drive traffic to their website, will need to retain their attention to outperform their competitors. Whatever the customer touchpoint be – the solution that drives conversion is highly detailed, immersive 3D and AR product visualization.
With 3D and AR product visualization, you can present customers with multiple interactive points of view of a product. It provides a 360-degree view of the product with the option to zoom in and out, making the deliberation period easier for consumers when assessing details, such as color, proportions, and texture.
Consumers are more engaged and spend more time on sites that have 3D and AR immersive assets, rather than bouncing to alternative sites offering attractive discounts. And during this intense BFCM period, using immersive experiences to maintain shopper engagement is the key to conversion.
For higher priced items, like furniture, AR in particular enables buyers to see what the product looks like in their own space, and reduces barriers to purchase.
With 3D renderings, it’s also easier for brands to personalize the shopper experience by enabling more configurability in product exploration, like backgrounds, and customizable colors and styles. This gives buyers more options and drives brand loyalty. Brands that get this right can boost their revenue by 40%.
Creating 3D versions of products means greater versatility. Brands can create an asset once and reuse it forever – in future Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, or any other campaign. Plus, if there’s a change to the product, updates can be easily applied through edits to the model instead of having to redo an entire photoshoot, and silo shots can be adapted based on the campaign or audience.
In addition to versatility, 3D and AR assets are 10x cheaper to produce than traditional photography, and require a fraction of the time to produce, so retailers save time and reduce costs.
Naturally, major eCommerce brands are quick to adopt immersive technology for short and long-term savings, while seeing conversion rate increases. But for key annual campaigns, such as Cyber Monday, the sheer volume of traffic multiplies the benefits of 3D technology, making immersive experiences a must-have to capture this once-yearly influx of shoppers.
CGTrader makes ordering custom 3D models as simple as possible. When you order 3D online, the process is fast and intuitive, featuring seamless transitions from ordering to publishing. Rapid delivery times remove the stress from urgent projects. And powerful DAM tools let you manage 3D assets across multiple channels and platforms.
Quality control is integrated into the system, guaranteeing optimal outcomes. Assets are ready for cross-platform deployment, from Facebook to eCommerce stores. And all IP created via Modelry is owned by clients, who enjoy complete control over the process at every stage.
Cyber Monday is a major opportunity to double, triple or even quadruple eCommerce sales, especially when brands innovate with their product visualization. By modernizing the customer experience with 3D and AR, retailers can grab more of the BFCM customer segment and run laps around their competitors that still rely on 2D visuals.
Try our platform today to get started with 3D models and take full advantage of the Cyber Monday retail spike.
Lara Oliveira is a Content Manager at Modelry. With over a decade of experience writing across corporates and startups, she is now focused on helping companies innovate with 3D and AR technology. Reach out to her at pr@cgtrader.com to talk about possible content collaborations!
