Boosting Sales with AR: Enhancing Engagement and Brand Value in Mobile Apps
Augmented Reality Apps are no longer a futuristic concept. Despite obstacles like hardware capabilities and user acceptance, the variety of AR features—such as AR Emoji, Filters, and AR Doodles—contributes greatly to the growth and prospects in the mobile AR market.
This article provides an overview of how to create augmented reality mobile apps as well as the business prospects they offer. Business owners and decision-makers who are thinking about implementing augmented reality app services for their mobile channels will especially find this relevant.
Augmented reality in mobile app development
The technique known as “augmented reality” combines virtual and physical elements. This provides consumers with a mobile experience in which virtual items coexist with them in the real world as they view it through the camera on their device. In essence, augmented reality improves the mobile experience by superimposing digital features on the user’s real-world surroundings.
Although people sometimes use the terms augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) interchangeably, the two represent distinct technologies. Without the visual overlay of the actual world, virtual reality (VR) generates computer-created content that users view through a headset.
Some of the most popular forms of mobile augmented reality are listed below to help you better understand how augmented reality usually functions in mobile applications. These might assist you in imagining how you wish to provide your clients with a distinctive mobile experience.
Developing augmented reality apps for mobile phones requires selecting the appropriate AR platform, such as Vuforia or Wikitude. These platforms offer word recognition, 3D object recognition, and image recognition—all crucial capabilities for AR creation.
Marker-based AR
Mobile apps that use marker-based augmented reality superimpose virtual items on real-world things. The smartphone decides the placement of virtual content (i.e., marking) after reading the visual input from the camera.
The virtual object disappears when the camera loses sight of the marker (for example, when the user moves the phone around); it reappears when the marker returns to camera view. The most common application for a marker-based augmented reality app is face filters. To decide where to put the face filters, apps look at the user’s mouth, nose, eyes, and other facial features.
Location-based AR
Location-based augmented reality apps do not need markers. They use GPS and other positional inputs to locate virtual objects. Because the camera operates in particular places, it scans the physical world and shows objects. Pokémon Go is the most well-known example of a location-based augmented reality app.
Markerless AR
Developers use alternative methods for positioning virtual items without needing markers besides location-based augmented reality. Markerless augmented reality uses multiple sensors to determine a mobile device’s orientation and position. A few varieties of these sensors are as follows:
• Accelerometer: This sensor calculates how much acceleration the mobile device experiences.
• Gyroscope: It calculates the angular velocity in three dimensions along all axes.
• Magnetometer: The sensor measures all directions of the ambient magnetic field.
The kind of augmented reality you choose to include in your product concept will affect the mobile app’s technology stack and your development team’s level of experience. Additionally, more complex AR apps may combine marker-based and markerless functionality.
Like creating any other mobile app, creating an AR application starts with defining your company goals, creating user personas, researching your rivals and market, identifying critical features, and so forth.
It appears that the secret to determining what you want to do with your augmented reality service is to match it with the economic objectives of your app. Making your AR feature engaging, entertaining, and interactive is one thing; implementing it to produce measurable business outcomes is quite another.
Determine whether your product vision is best served by marker-based AR, locati0n-based AR, other types of markerless AR, or a combination of these by speaking with your technology team (whether it be an internal team or one from a consultancy) about the precise features of the actual AR feature.
Although it is their responsibility to advise you on the best technological techniques, it is your responsibility to make sure that they are in line with your strategic and business goals. For instance, the AR functionality ought to support a certain stage of your sales or marketing funnel.
Maximizing hardware-dependent capabilities
Choosing the appropriate tools for your technological stack is the next step after deciding on the functionality for your augmented reality mobile app. How your augmented reality software will be able to optimize the hardware capabilities of your consumers’ smartphones or tablets is an important consideration.
When developing AR mobile applications for iOS, Android, or both, you must be able to fully utilize the camera feature of the device, GPS, and movement detection (and possibly Bluetooth and the microphone as well). These hardware features are frequently required to enable augmented reality.
Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile is a software development kit (SDK) that makes augmented reality app development easier by enabling developers to write the same business logic for both iOS and Android, regardless of whether you’re creating a native or cross-platform app.
AR-specific technology stack
Augmented reality apps need a database, cloud services, a frontend and backend architecture, and testing tools for quality control, much like any other mobile application. Most likely, you are already well-versed in these.
AR apps have a special need: they must have a strong backend programming architecture that allows them to identify real-world settings and overlay virtual items on top of them. Only AR-specific tools, the majority of which (though not all) are not free nor open-source, can power this.
AR-specific stack of technologies
Augmented reality apps need a database, cloud services, a frontend and backend architecture, and testing tools for quality control, much like any other mobile application. Most likely, you are already well-versed in these.
AR apps have a special need: they must have a strong backend programming architecture that allows them to identify real-world settings and overlay virtual items on top of them. Only AR-specific tools and platforms—the majority of which, though not all, are free or open-source—can power this. Text recognition, 3D object identification, and image recognition are among the capabilities available for developing AR experiences on popular AR platforms like Vuforia and Wikitude.
When choosing technologies for your AR tech stack, you should concentrate on augmented reality software development kits (SDKs), which are responsible for fusing virtual and real-world content.
Although the SDKs listed below are the most widely used, you should still consult your technology team to determine which one is ideal for your product idea.
• Google ARCore is a toolkit for Android devices that is compatible with Unity, Unreal, and Java/OpenGL. It makes environmental awareness possible (e.g., locating virtual objects on shelves or the floor by recognizing horizontal surfaces). Motion tracking and light estimation are two of its numerous AR features, which make objects look natural in a space.
• One of the top augmented reality SDKs on the market, Vuforia supports a variety of features, including text recognition, object detection in 2D and 3D, the creation of 3D geometric maps, the transformation of static augmented photographs into motion flicks, cloud and on-device storage, and many more. Additionally, it provides VuMarks, a proprietary barcode feature.
• Apple ARKit: Only iOS devices, especially the iPhone and iPad, may use this SDK. The Apple ARKit tracks its surroundings using a technique known as Visual Inertial Odometry, which enables it to recognize movement in a space. Developers will probably need to use ARKit in conjunction with a number of Apple products, specifically RealityKit, RoomPlan, Reality Composer, and Reality Converter.
Your technical team will probably also tell you about a number of other reliable SDKs, like Wikitude, MAXST, EasyAR, ARToolKit, and Kudan.
Cost, OS support (Android and/or iOS), accessory support (such as smart glasses), cloud recognition, 3D tracking (not all SDKs support this), Unity support (compatibility with this well-known game engine), and many other factors are important to take into account when choosing the best SDK for your project.
AR’s advantages for mobile apps
Some people would quickly write off augmented reality as a passing trend or gimmick. But as I’ll show below, the advantages for businesses have been quantified in addition to being real. Even though augmented reality is still relatively new, it has already shown that it can produce significant business outcomes. Our interactions with the digital world are changing as a result of this innovation, which provides previously unthinkable levels of personalization and immersion.
AR piques clients’ interest and can be entertaining and interesting. A NielsenIQ survey found that 61% of consumers would rather purchase from companies that provide an augmented reality experience, and 56% of consumers stated that AR increases their confidence in a product’s quality. Another study found that users of the AR feature viewed 28% more products and spent 20.7% more time on the mobile app.
More significantly, higher user involvement may result in more revenue. Customers who utilized the augmented reality features were 19.8% more likely to make a purchase than those who did not, according to a 19-month study that examined the user behavior of over 160,000 customers during 800,000 mobile app sessions. This suggests that AR can help businesses increase revenue.
Companies are already incorporating augmented reality into their digital platforms across a variety of industries. For instance, healthcare professionals employ augmented reality (AR) to improve the patient experience during treatments.
Augmented reality is being used by real estate developers, brokers, interior decorators, and internet markets to improve the experience of purchasing and remodeling a property. In video games, online personalities and avatars inhabit the real world.
Mobile augmented reality’s potential for e-commerce applications
I want to draw attention to one particular application of AR, which is the way it has been revolutionizing e-commerce, retail, and online shopping through Virtual Try-On (VTO). Customers can digitally sample or “try on” a variety of things, including clothing, makeup, and personal effects, using augmented reality and virtual try-on.
With VTO, the product is superimposed over the customer’s photo using augmented reality technology, allowing them to view how the clothing or item would fit and seem on them.
Those who have used virtual try-ons attest to the fact that they not only make internet shopping more efficient but also more entertaining and engaging. Customers can try on the newest styles or ensembles that they might not have otherwise thought to buy. This is partly because virtual try-ons make it easier for customers to move between items.
VTO can be an excellent tool for increasing sales in an online business by more efficiently guiding customers from interest to a purchase when utilized strategically inside the sales funnel.
This AR retail use case has the potential to increase shop revenue because
• Increased customization
• Increased interaction with users
• Independence of locati0n
• Differentiation of brands
Virtual try-ons have also been shown to lower expenses through improved inventory control and fewer item returns. Numerous well-known fashion businesses are already utilizing augmented reality due to these advantages.
To improve both our native and cross-platform development skills, we employed a cross-platform technology known as Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile (KMM). We also wanted to investigate and test the potential of augmented reality in conjunction with KMM.
In order to illustrate Kotlin Multiplatform’s business case, we tested it by showing high-value features like the product’s AR in the best possible quality.
Online shopping is a very visual experience, therefore companies should always think about optimizing camera-related features for their mobile apps, whether they are selling clothing or furniture.
But developers are aware that cross-platform development is made more difficult by camera features. While optimizing hardware features that augmented reality mobile applications strongly rely on, Kotlin Multiplatform makes it easier to write the same business logic for both iOS and Android.
Develop a mobile app with AR features that your customers will love using
Consumer popularity, market data, and trends all appear to point to augmented reality playing a bigger role in our digital lives—whether they be personal or professional. This indicates that business opportunities are still in their infancy and will only increase.
If you are afraid to take the jump into augmented reality, keep in mind that the technology should be in line with your business goals. Whether your goal is to attract new customers, encourage them to make a purchase, hold their interest for a longer period of time, or improve their brand experience, the augmented reality feature needs to align with your aims.
Regardless of whether your iOS and Android app is currently available on the market or you are just starting to develop one, we advise you to take into account Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile, which is compatible with any AR toolkit. It allows apps to make the most of the hardware features required for augmented reality to function, including as movement detection, locati0n support, and the device’s camera.
Augmented Reality Apps are reshaping how we engage with the digital world. With growing investment in augmented reality in Malaysia, now’s the time to explore the possibilities for your brand.
Ready to explore how Augmented Reality Apps can transform your mobile strategy? Whether you’re in the early stages of planning or looking to enhance an existing app, our team is here to help. Get in touch with us to discuss your goals, explore possibilities, and find the right AR solution for your business.