What is a virtual store? How does it work? Its use cases, features, and more

With the rapid expansion of online shopping, customer expectations are also increasing, as they require a smarter and more convenient shopping experience. To build stronger customer relationships, brands must understand their needs and requirements while providing them with an enhanced online shopping experience.

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With the integration and implementation of augmented and virtual reality technologies, the e-commerce industry has experienced significant growth worldwide, benefiting both sellers and buyers in multiple ways. Due to the implementation of AR and VR technologies, the global market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.72% from 2023 to 2027, reaching an estimated market size of US$52.05 billion by 2027.

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Virtual reality and augmented reality have helped e-commerce companies in enhancing user experience by introducing various features, such as virtual stores, virtual try-ons, and 3D product visualization. These technologies have helped both sellers and customers, but there are some questions that always come to our minds when it comes to understanding AR and VR technologies.

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Have you ever wondered what a virtual store is and how it operates? What are its key features and benefits? What are its applications and use cases? Therefore, to clear all your doubts related to the virtual store, I am here with detailed information on the virtual store, its core technologies, features, benefits, use cases, and more, which you will find in this blog.

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What is a virtual store?

A virtual store is a replica of the physical store that is made by using technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and 3D modeling, helping brands to provide their users with an in-person-like shopping experience. E-commerce industries can use these virtual stores to bridge the gap between online and offline shopping experiences while providing their customers with 3D environments to interact with products.

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It provides users with a personalized and engaging experience by offering them various features, such as virtual try-ons, 3D models, 360-degree previews, and more. It helps brands replace the older way of using static images for product listings with interactive 3D models, enabling their customers to explore products in more depth and offering them personalized assistance during online shopping.

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Explain the working of the virtual store and the technologies used behind it.

Using a virtual store helps the brand to increase its reach and accessibility to the audience, as it reduces the geographical limitations and enables them to shop anytime and anywhere while sitting at home. Integrating a virtual store in the e-commerce platform helps businesses in generating more revenue, but to understand the feature completely, it is necessary to comprehend its working and core technologies.

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In this section, I will give you brief information on how a virtual store works and the core technologies behind the working of this online tool that helps brands build stronger relationships with their customers. Let us study the working of the virtual store and its core technologies in detail.

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Core technologies behind the working of a virtual store

There are multiple technologies that are associated with the working of a virtual store, which include 3D modeling, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality. With the help of these technologies, brands can bridge the gap between online and offline experiences while providing them with an immersive experience.

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Therefore, to understand the working of the virtual store, it is necessary to study these core technologies and their role in the successful working of the virtual store.

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1. 3D modeling

To allow users to explore products and provide them with an in-person-like experience, it is necessary to provide them with interactive and engaging 3D models of products. The technology used to create these models is known as 3D modeling, which enables brands to represent their products using a three-dimensional model, enabling their customers to explore and examine items from different angles and perspectives.

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2. Augmented reality

Another technology that is used to build a virtual store is augmented reality, which helps brands to provide their customers with the facility of AR overlays, enabling them to visualize the virtual products in the real world. It enables brands to offer their customers features, like virtual try-ons and 360-degree previews, that will help them to overlay digital content on a realistic environment and boost their confidence during online shopping.

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3. Virtual reality

Virtual reality is a crucial technology that is used in building virtual stores because it helps brands to create an entire virtual walk-in store to browse products and interact with virtual assistants, providing them with an in-store-like shopping experience. It also helps the brand to provide its customers with personalized and interactive experiences during online shopping, building their trust and loyalty towards the brand.

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4. Artificial intelligence

With the help of artificial intelligence technology, brands will be able to understand customer preferences and choices because it provides them with data-driven insights on different products and items. It will help the brand to provide its customers with personalized recommendations and tailored services, which will offer them a more customized experience, along with assisted product suggestion engines, virtual assistants, and customer service tools.

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5. Computer vision

To provide users with a realistic experience, the virtual store uses computer vision technology that provides them with enhanced features like recognition and tracking of real-world objects. It also provides users with a precise placement of the object during virtual try-on, enabling them to understand and visualize the item in the real environment with the help of visual data and the device’s camera.

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6. E-commerce integration

With the help of e-commerce integration, brands can provide their customers with more back-end support by connecting the AR, 3D, and VR experiences with the product catalog and payment gateways. By using the e-commerce platform, brands can manage their customer database, orders, inventory, and shopping carts in one place and provide their customers with real-time payment updates according to configurations.

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7. User interface design

User interface helps the brand to provide its customers with an easy-to-use and intuitive interface, which will enable users to navigate throughout the platform and explore more products. It also makes their shopping experience smoother and convenient by offering them responsive layouts, product filters, and immersive interaction design. Also, it helps the brand to increase user engagement by keeping them engaged with different products and interactive layouts.

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8. Machine learning

To provide users with a personalized experience, the virtual store uses machine learning technology that helps the brand process vast amounts of data to understand customer needs. By using this technology, e-commerce sellers and manufacturers can improve user experience through data analysis, recommendation engines, and predictive models that will help them understand customer insights and demand forecasting.

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How does a virtual store work by using these technologies?

In the previous section, I helped you understand different core technologies related to the working of virtual stores so that you can provide your customers with an immersive and engaging experience. With the help of these core technologies, brands can keep their customers engaged and enhance their shopping experience by introducing them to multiple features, like virtual try-ons, 3D models, and 360-degree previews.

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However, studying these technologies is not enough because understanding how they work will help the brand to integrate the virtual stores into the e-commerce platform. After studying the core technologies behind the working of the virtual store, it's time to understand how to use these technologies and how they work together to provide users with an interactive, personalized, and convenient virtual shopping environment.

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1. Immersive technologies

To provide users with immersive and engaging experiences, some virtual stores utilize a combination of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. By using these technologies, brands can provide their customers with an in-store-like shopping experience, enabling them to explore products and get personalized assistance with the help of the AR overlays of digital products to provide them with a complete visualization of items in real-time environments.

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2. Intelligence and personalization

To provide users with a personalized experience, it is very important to understand their preferences and choices, which is possible by using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. By using these technologies, virtual stores can help brands understand customer behavior and preferences, which will help them to enhance user experience and increase their engagement on the platform.

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3. Content and environment

Providing users with an interactive and engaging environment is crucial to make your virtual store a hit among them, as it will provide them with an in-store-like experience. To pursue this task, the virtual store uses 3D modeling and computer vision technology that detects and tracks real-world objects to help users understand the precise object placement. It also helps users to explore and preview products from different angles and perspectives due to 3D models and 360-degree previews.

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4. User experience and operation

The virtual store provides brands with an easy-to-use interface and e-commerce integration so that the brand can keep users engaged and provide them with an enhanced experience. With the help of an intuitive interface, brands can keep their customers engaged on the website by guiding them in finding products and exploring the store. Whereas the e-commerce integration enables the brand to perform back-end tasks such as inventory, products, and payments securely and seamlessly.

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Comparison between a virtual store and an online store

Both online and virtual stores are used by e-commerce brands and businesses to retain their online presence and reach a wider audience through the internet. Although the purpose of these stores is the same, they are different from each other. Virtual stores use immersive technology like AR and VR to create a replica of physical stores, whereas an online store is a web-based platform that offers a listing of products.

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To help you distinguish between a virtual store and an online store, I am here with a comparison table that you can use to clarify the concepts of a virtual store and an online store.

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Benefits of using the virtual store for brands

A virtual store provides brands with multiple benefits, such as increased reach, reduced costs, and boosted customer engagement, enabling them to increase their business growth and revenue. It also helps customers in exploring new products by giving them 24/7 accessibility and personalized experiences, which will help the brand to increase awareness and provide them with data-driven insights.

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In this section, I will provide you with some more information on the benefits of using a virtual store and how it helps businesses to increase their customer database.

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1. Cost-effective operations

With the help of a virtual store, brands can reduce unnecessary costs associated with physical retail stores, which will help them perform operations in a cost-effective manner. It also helps businesses to reduce the cost of physical samples and inventory management by providing users with more interactive and engaging ways to explore products.

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It also helps customers to make confident decisions that help the brand to build their trust and reduce the possibility of product returns due to the uncertainty of color mismatch.

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2. Global accessibility

Another benefit of using a virtual store is reaching a wider audience and providing them with global accessibility, enabling the brand to increase its customer base. With the help of this feature, brands reduce the need for customers to conduct physical visits to the store, which will also reduce the geographical distance and time limitations for them.

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Apart from this, it gives customers the advantage to explore their favorite brands and products anytime and anywhere while sitting in the comfort of their home.

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3. Data-driven insights

With the integration of artificial intelligence, brands will be able to access the data-driven insights of their customers' preferences and choices that they can use to generate more user-friendly products.

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With the help of this data, brands can also focus on making smart decisions that will make the customer's shopping journey easier and more convenient. It will also enable the brand to improve its marketing reach and strategies by understanding the target audience and their behavior more precisely.

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4. Brand building

By using the virtual store, brands can build a stronger digital presence that will help them to reach their target audience on a wider scale, stand out from the crowd with unique features, and reduce geographical limitations.

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It will also help businesses to understand the market trends and help them follow to catch the eye of their customers on different platforms, including web browsers, social media, and more. Therefore, using the virtual store will help the brand to stand out in the market and reach a wider audience while building stronger brand awareness.

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Best virtual store SDK providers for brands

Using a virtual store brings lots of benefits for brands because it helps them to increase their business and build a stronger customer base. However, building a virtual store from scratch requires a lot of effort, time, and cost, which may not be possible for small businesses or e-commerce companies.

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Therefore, there are various SDK providers that help e-commerce companies by providing them with an integrable SDK or API to reduce the development cost and time for the brand. In this section, I will tell you about the best virtual store SDKs that e-commerce retailers and sellers use to enhance user experience and boost engagement.

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1. GlamAR

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GlamAR is an AR- and VR-based solution provider for brands that deal in different sectors, such as fashion, beauty, footwear, and furniture, which helps them to build stronger relationships with their customers. It provides brands with multiple solutions, such as virtual try-ons, virtual stores, 3D model creators, and 360-degree product viewers, enabling them to provide their customers with an enhanced shopping experience.

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I tried the virtual store SDK that helps users walk through the virtual store of the brand and provides them with an in-store-like shopping experience. By using the virtual store SDK, brands can customize their online storefront according to their brand’s image and identity to create unique layouts and designs. It will also provide users with the accessibility to explore products anytime and anywhere while sitting at home.

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With the help of this online store, brands can provide their customers with an interactive digital shopping experience, enabling them to explore products as if in a physical store. It also helps the brand to widen its customer base by reaching out to a wider audience through the virtual store, without dealing with any geographical limitations. Therefore, the virtual store SDK will help brands to build stronger relationships with their customers and increase their overall revenue.

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Features

• Global accessibility: It helps the brand to reach a global audience by providing them with the accessibility to explore products anytime and anywhere using the virtual store, enabling the brand to increase its online presence globally

• Customizable storefront: It provides brands with customization options and features, enabling them to create interactive and unique product layouts that offer users a personalized and consistent experience throughout the website.

• Interactive experience: It helps brands to provide their customers with an interactive and immersive experience by enabling them to walk through the virtual store, assisting the brand in generating more leads and conversions.

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2. ScienceSoft

ScienceSoft is an e-commerce solution provider that helps both B2B and B2C companies to build their customer relationships and make their operations easier. It offers multiple solutions for different brands and industries, helping them to increase their ROI and generate revenue by introducing new features. It offers various business and development models, which will help businesses to get clean-coded and high-performing solutions.

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I tried the virtual store solution that allows brands to provide their customers with an interactive online store to explore products virtually. With the help of this solution, brands can integrate the virtual store into their e-commerce platform so that their customers can explore new products using virtual try-ons and 3D models, offering them a personalized experience.

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With the help of this virtual store solution, brands can enhance their business revenue by increasing user confidence during online purchases and generating more leads. It also helps the brand to understand the customer preferences and choices by offering them data-driven analysis that they can use to generate more user-friendly products and modify their marketing strategies.

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Features

• Seamless integration: It allows brands to perform seamless integration of the software into their e-commerce platform, enabling them to synchronize the product catalog with a 3D product imaging account and use 3D images to match with SKUs.

• AI analytics: It helps the brand to provide customers with a personalized experience by enabling the brand to study data-driven insights on users’ behavior and preferences, enabling them to highlight the product depending on their choices.

• Motion tracking: It provides users with a real-time experience by detecting and tracking their body movements and motion, so that it will help the user to understand and visualize the precise placement of the product using AR overlays.

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3. Odyssey3D

Odyssey3D is a virtual store plugin for Shopify that helps brands provide their customers with an enhanced and immersive experience during online shopping. It enables brands to provide their customers with a real-time online shopping experience by enabling them to use virtual try-ons and offering them 360-degree model previews to explore products from different angles and perspectives.

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I tried the custom virtual spaces that allow brands to customize the virtual store according to their needs and choices, enabling them to maintain their brand’s image and identity. It offers brands seamless integration and high-speed functionality so that they can elevate the user experience by reducing the loading time and offering them flexibility and scalability for future needs.

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It also helps brands to build stronger relationships with their customers by keeping them engaged on the e-commerce platform via 3D models and virtual try-ons, increasing the user engagement for the business. Apart from that, it also provides businesses with the support of a dedicated team that will help them complete the software integration and keep them up-to-date with the latest updates.

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Features

• Customization options: It allows brands to customize the virtual store by offering multiple customization options, enabling them to provide users with a similar shopping experience and maintain the brand’s image and identity.

• Seamless integration: It helps businesses to perform seamless integration of the software into the e-commerce platform by offering them dedicated team support, a step away from their reach to provide them with high-speed functionality.

• Hassle-free execution: It has a dedicated team of engineers and developers that handles all the complex coding and technicalities, providing brands and businesses with the opportunity to execute the integration hassle-free.

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Application of using a virtual store in different sectors

A virtual store is a vast concept that can be used in multiple sectors, which helps brands to get recognition from a wider audience and provide them with better services. With the latest technologies and innovations, brands from different sectors have been using new features that help them build stronger relationships with their customers.

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In this section, I will tell you about the use cases of a virtual store in different sectors or domains and how it helps brands to understand their customers and provide them with a personalized experience.

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1. Retail and e-commerce

The first application of a virtual store is in the retail and e-commerce sector, where the store helps businesses to provide their customers with an enhanced experience. By using this online tool, brands can offer multiple features, such as virtual try-ons, 3D models, and 360-degree previews, so that customers can explore products from different angles and perspectives.

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It also helps customers to visualize products and explore them in an engaging way, building stronger relationships between customers and brands.

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2. Automotive

With the help of virtual stores, automotive brands can provide their customers with visualized presentations of their cars and models. It allows users to explore car features and modifications by using 3D models and 360-degree previews in a virtual environment.

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Apart from that, it also helps brands to provide their staff with virtual training that will help them to understand the features precisely and serve customers more effectively.

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3. Fashion and beauty

Another application of the virtual store is in the fashion and beauty industry, which helps brands to provide their customers with an immersive and interactive way to explore products.

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It allows brands to integrate virtual try-ons and 3D models of the products into their e-commerce platform, which will enable users to explore products and customize them accordingly. It also helps brands to increase customer satisfaction rate by reducing their uncertainty of color and size mismatch.

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4. Furniture and home design

By using the virtual store, many furniture and home-designing brands provide their customers with a cost-effective and sustainable way to try new furniture and home decor items using AR overlays in their homes.

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It helps users to save the cost and time of trying different products physically and enables them to understand the layout by customizing products as per their needs. It also helps designers to streamline the process and make communication easier by working on the customization more effectively.

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Future outlook of virtual stores

With the introduction of the virtual store, the e-commerce industry has seen immense growth over the past few years, and has helped many brands to build their online presence. However, the feature has been evolving daily with the latest technologies and innovations, which come with new trends and bring various possibilities for the future.

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In this section, I will tell you some of the future trends and outlooks of using a virtual store for your brand and how it will help the e-commerce industry to grow at a faster pace worldwide.

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1. Immersive technologies

A virtual store is a blend of some immersive technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D modeling, which makes it an interactive and engaging feature. In the upcoming years, these technologies will grow with new innovations and specializations, which will help the brand to enhance its reach towards the audience. It will also help users to engage and explore new products in a real-time environment while sitting at home.

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2. Personalization with AI

With the evolution of the virtual store, brands are able to provide their customers with more personalized experiences by understanding their preferences and choices. In the virtual store, artificial intelligence plays a crucial role for brands by providing them with data-driven insights on customer preferences and choices, which businesses can use to provide customers with hyper-personalized experiences and help them build their trust.

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3. Sustainability

Another future trend that comes with a virtual store is sustainability, which will help e-commerce brands and retailers to opt for more cost-effective ways to build their digital presence and provide their customers with contactless experiences. It helps the brand in reducing physical sample costs and streamlining logistics processes by enabling users to interact with products using 3D models, 360-degree previews, and virtual try-ons, providing them with a lifelike experience.

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4. Blended experience

It provides customers with a blended experience of both online and offline shopping by enabling them to walk in the store virtually and providing them with personalized assistance through AI chatbots or guided assistants. It will help the brand to build stronger relationships with its customers by keeping them engaged on the website during online shopping, offering them tracking and detection of their movements for a lifelike experience.

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Conclusion

Using a virtual store for a brand brings lots of benefits, such as increased user engagement, enhanced user experience, and generating sales and conversions. With the help of a virtual store, brands can also build their online presence by reaching out to a wider audience through their devices all over the world.

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However, to use the virtual store appropriately, it is important to understand its working and core technologies because it will help the brand to provide its customers with better services and understand customer behavior and preferences precisely. Therefore, in this blog, I have provided you with complete information on how a virtual store works, its benefits, applications, future outlooks, and more, which will help brands to comprehend more about this incredible technology.