Selling online may be the new future, yet 80% of fine jewelry and luxury watch purchases will still be made in-store. Balancing it out with social commerce yields good results but does not help in creating a digital journey. 

As online fine jewelry sales are expected to increase from 13% to up to 21% of the total global market by 2025, those retailers and eCommerce companies willing to benefit must invest in designing an exclusive digital journey. 

A digital journey is built on the same values as an offline shopping journey including customer orientation, clean, beautiful, exclusive aesthetics, and experiences. Here is where the online user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are enhanced by digitally augmented but human-centric tools like 3D product visualizers, 3D product configurators, or virtual try-ons. 

This blog is dedicated to luxury product eCommerce and retailers looking to invest in creating an exclusive digital journey for their customers. 

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Scaling Up Shopping Experience With Virtual Try-On

We may be familiar with Augmented Reality (AR) through the use of video chat filters on most social media platforms. It is estimated that nearly 75 percent of the global population will be regular AR users by 2025. 

Therefore, integrating the power of deep learning and associated technology like AR into customizable applications such as Virtual Try-On is now viewed as the next big thing in enhancing eCommerce sales. 

Look at the above Virtual Try-On app integrated into the Brown Fashion iOS application. Thanks to the dedicated library that is utilizing the advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) and neural processing units (NPUs) present in most smartphones, the app can seamlessly detect key points like locating a wrist or fingers in a live image. This opens a pandora’s box of use-cases like 

• Jewelers can showcase their entire collection digitally, thereby saving inventory costs. 
• Virtually trying on a piece of jewelry or a watch will increase buyer confidence and should result in lesser returns. 

A scale down version of Virtual Try-On would be through static photography. 

Take the case of the U.K.’s famous high-end jeweler H.Samuel. The phone camera integration takes a hand selfie. The image is post-processed and the selected jewelry product appears on the finger or wrist for better visualization. 

Customizing Beyond Messages and Initials

True. Luxury brands are offering e-shoppers significant freedom beyond just customizing a piece of jewelry with initials. 

Take the case of Metalpressions, an artisan jeweler. It allows its customers to design their pieces, choose desirable metals or stones and play with its specifications, and dimensions, until they are satisfied with the results.  

The real-time pricing module linked to the online designing software makes the overall journey even more interesting. Another important thing to note is that the final design is directly relayed to the manufacturer for production. These modules can be easily integrated into popular ERPs or CRMs for seamless transactions. 

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Visualizing Entire Product Portfolio Without Photoshoots

“A poorly orchestrated try-on could actually discourage a consumer instead of helping them make a purchase decision. What I’ve seen a lot of recently is people trying to utilize these new channels, but not really putting in the know-how and the expertise and the experience design side of things.”

Jinder Kang, Innovation Consultancy Lead.

There are high chances that jewelry customers may already know what kind of gemstone or metal they want to include but have no design considerations in mind. After giving their specific input on the 3D configurator, they would prefer rotating product animations than just zooming in to have a better look at the design before making a purchase. 

Here is where you should offer a full-screen preview with panoramic 3D images of the product, even if you’re still unsure of implementing a virtual try-on. Simple 2D images with zoom-in functionality may not enhance conversion rates. 

On the other hand, 3D visualization with options to customize the product can improve conversion rates even further. Also, generating such full-screen preview and 3D visualization requires no dedicated product photography sessions. 

Digital Sales Tools to Deepen Customer Relationships

While most of the effort goes into marketing the website, it is even more important to engage site visitors in one-to-one conversations. Let’s uncover some digital sales tools that can be easily integrated into your eCommerce website built on Magento, Shopify, or WooCommerce platforms. 

Virtual Consultation or Live Chat: Both are one and the same. The goal is to mimic the traditional offline experience of face-to-face interaction in purchasing customized jewelry. Depending on the level of interaction, you can integrate a host of commonly used apps like FaceTime, WhatsApp Messenger, or Skype into your website. 

There is also an option of purpose-built software integrations to transfer documents or share your screen to make your luxury eCommerce brand look premium. 

Clienteling: The very foundation of luxury brand sales is to make every customer experience valued. With a rapid shift to online eCommerce, Clienteling is a necessary strategy to incorporate for creating powerful and personalized customer experiences. 
Clienteling combines customer and product data to create a unified view across all channels. All you need is the right CRM platform like HubSpot to manage it. ColorWhistle is a valued HubSpot solutions provider and can work on a flexible budget.

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Transform Your Luxury eCommerce Business With Technology 

We’re thrilled to see fine jewelry and watch retailers take serious steps to level up their game in online product discovery, digital customer experiences, and sales. After all, interactions with products that have AR and/or 3D content are known to result in a 94% higher conversion rate than for products without AR/3D.

Hire a Technical Consultant, Product Strategist, UX Engineer, and UI & Web Developers to overcome the tech challenge. This takes care of enhancing digital customer experience and sales strategy. Meanwhile, a dedicated and long-term content strategy will boost online product discovery and drive potential leads. 

Professional & creative teams at ColorWhistle can help you create end-to-end luxury eCommerce website solutions, i.e. from website design, and popular website frontend solutions to 3D visualization/configuration and ColorWhistle digital marketing services that remain our core services. Please note that we are yet to test our capabilities in the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality arena.

Web or mobile, a Custom 3D configurator/visualizer for Jewellery & Watches can be optimized for each end device.

You may also contact us to request any custom requirements. We would love to hear from you.