Many companies are now offering samples of next-level visualization experiences via their websites, TV ads, onsite digital signage, retail kiosks, video walls, billboards, and more. Some are providing VR headsets to captivate visitors on trade show floors, at conventions, marketing events, training experiences, and entertainment venues.

Augmented reality is ready for broad-scale rollout. It’s no longer the mystifying and cost-prohibitive new thing for larger and many medium-sized competitors in the high-end home appliances industry. At this point, enough big brands have taken the leap that smaller brands can afford to adapt this technology to meet their needs.

Over the coming years, sellers and buyers will find that 3D, AR, VR and other forms of enhanced visualization have developed around them as the new standard way of being in the market environment. Shoppers will have a visually stunning and stimulating new consumer experience without leaving the couch.

Consumers now have the digital resources to make better-informed buying decisions than ever before. Brands are adapting to accommodate their audiences in the way that data has shown people prefer to obtain information about products and purchase. They’re offering realistic 3D images of major home appliances and other high-end, high-touch products that shoppers can examine from all angles. For example, buyers can visualize how appliance products look and function in their own homes — with their mobile device and without downloading an app.

Augmented reality, 3D, and other visualization applications overlay visual, auditory, and/or other sensory data on real objects in real or created places, to enhance the individual’s experience of it. Providing realistic digital interaction with items gives shoppers a sense of reduced risk in remote purchasing of normally high-touch products.

Shopify data and other marketing industry reports indicate that:

• Conversion rates increase by as much as 250% when shoppers view products in 3D.
• 42% of shoppers will pay more for products that provide a 3D introduction.
• 3D visual configurators yield an average ROI of 40%.
• 66% of shoppers find that a 3D introduction increases their confidence in their purchase.
• In the coming years, 30% more furniture and appliances consumers will purchase online.

The application of vast numbers of communications enhancements is trending beyond the business sector. For example, the consumer advocacy agency Consumer Reports has conducted its first “360-Degree Video Tour” of a high-tech refrigerator from Samsung. The organization has announced its intent to use the 360 video in more of its published review processes going forward.

Add that to all the major retailers and manufacturers now using various versions of multimedia for training, convention presentations, and other events. There are also the everyday just-for-fun applications like Google ARcore, which inserts nonexistent animated characters in real locations amid real-life activity there. There’s Google Glass for a new computer projection experience, and 3D internal body images used by hospitals to prevent surgical errors, vast applications in scientific research, education, entertainment, and so much more. It’s becoming easier to imagine a world in the near future with ubiquitous displays of digitally-enhanced reality around every corner in daily life.

Deeper implications of visualization applications include evidence from the all-powerful star rating system, which has demonstrated social proof of the effectiveness of an enhanced customer experience. A McKinsey report reveals the digital star rating system as arguably a visualization facilitator if you will. As all online consumers know, the star rating system now pervades the web retail environment. It’s the predominant system for registering customer feedback and assisting shoppers in making buying decisions.

Per McKinsey research, even small changes in a star rating can accelerate growth for a product to a staggering rate of 30% to 200%, depending, of course, on the category. The advantage for brands implementing visualization aids is that sustaining increased conversion rates at scale after the initial sales surge necessitates just that kind of unique approach.

Product quality along with the overall customer experience is the pivotal pair in today’s most effective marketing strategy, vs. traditional campaigns that often rely on hyperbolic product claims. Vivid, engaging product visualizations are now the centerpiece of the first-visit conversion process.

Options for appealing to consumers are expanding in revolutionary ways, from 3D, AR, to VR. Digital venues are unfolding new dimensions of life-like experiences for users. Shopping and purchasing habits have already very fluidly adapted to all viable digital opportunities rolled out to make people's lives more convenient over the past two decades. Ultimately, the retail environment can be anticipated to become ever more virtual, augmented, interactive, facilitative, and engaging.

Consumer behavior data have proven our willingness to trade product touching for travel reduction. We’ll adapt to just about any alternative that simplifies any transaction to a quick web search, just a few more clicks to a product page, the cart, and the Buy Now button. Visualization enhancements are among today’s most effective alternatives for helping build relationships with customers while supporting their preference for independent, remote shopping.

So, the consumer-driven growth of AR and other product presentation applications can be recognized as the start of a broader migration to visualization methods online. The new enhancement modes can now be predicted to alter the dynamics of the retail environment in the next decade as much as online shopping transfigured it in the past one.

However, just as, despite all predictions, TV didn’t really kill radio and print isn’t really dead due to digital, online visualization will not replace the in-person touch approach to high-end home product shopping. And, it’s not intended to do so. The new tools are not to replace but to support the methods home products brands currently use. They are to help bridge the gap between remote and in-person experience by enhancing the former. The most effective business use of visualization is in helping people become better engaged customers.