How Northern Lighting Leverages Augmented Reality for e-Commerce

A Case Study

Northern Lighting is a Nordic company specializing in the design and manufacture of luxury in-home lights. The company creates lighting solutions that replicate natural light, delivering to commercial projects and retailers in over 30 countries.

“Our goal is to create and inspire.”

- Northern Lighting

With Augment, Northern Lighting enhances consumer engagement and drives sales through an interactive augmented reality experience. Augment expedites the decision-making process for consumers.

Northern Lighting uses augmented reality to help shoppers make enlightened buying decisions.

By scanning the Northern Lighting brochure through the Augment app (or your own app with the Augment SDK), shoppers are directed to an entire online catalog of Northern Lighting products. From there, shoppers can choose any lamp and see it in life-like augmented reality right on the table or floor before them.

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Northern Lighting found that allowing customers to see how a selection of their products would look in their homes helps them more than merely visualize how it could fit through 2D photos. Even with a product’s dimensions and high quality images, visualizing how it would look in your space is simply up to your imagination. Augmented reality adds a physical presence behind these product photos with 3D models.

With a tutorial on their website, Northern Lighting guides their customers through this fascinating and useful experience.

During trade shows, Northern Lighting also reduces the number of physical samples it brings and is able to present a large range of products through a more engaging experience. The benefit is even greater given that customers are always impressed by new and innovative technologies, as well as solving a real pain point.

Can Augmented Reality Benefit Your Shoppers?

Augmented reality is the segway for brands and retailers to create more meaningful and memorable shopping experiences with the goal of driving more informed buying decisions for consumers.

The future of retail lies in creating an online shopping experience that accommodates consumers with the same perks of shopping in-store. Online shopping has been a hotbed for retail innovation but it pales in comparison to how products will be bought online in the near future.

Innovative product visualization is at the core, and Augment offers multiple ways to optimize shopping experiences. Northern Lighting utilizes Augment to power their print catalog, while the Augment SDK allows retailers to leverage augmented reality within their e-commerce platforms.

Retail has always been about engaging experiences with the right delivery (meaning time and place). The evolution of e-commerce shows past milestones that have addressed these same pain points with enough efficiency to make online shopping a consistent revenue channel for brands and stores. Still, as the digital era matures in how personalized it has become, consumers of all generations are expecting these experiences at the bare minimum.

Even at the most basic of personalized interactions -- displaying related products on an online store or even ad retargeting -- both have become a luxury that shoppers inherently anticipate.

To continue this engaging experience in a way that provides value to both sides, augmented reality is the tool that will differentiate retailers in the coming year. Mobile commerce sales consumed 30% of all U.S. e-commerce sales in 2015. With AR working mainly through smartphones, this technology is expected to capitalize on the growing dominance of mobile commerce.

The primary drawback to online shopping is that shoppers fear purchasing the wrong item. Many of the sensory elements that customers use to make their purchasing decisions in-store are often lost when it comes to e-commerce.

With online shopping, a customer cannot touch or feel an item, see how it works, or know how it will fit in their home. The loss of this interactivity and presence in the shopping experience leads to uncertain buyers and more abandoned carts.

68% spend more time at a retailer if they can shop with AR, according to Retail Perceptions.

The growing presence of augmented reality in retail is in a place to springboard retailers over these hurdles.

Although many brands believe that augmented reality is an innovation of the future, it’s providing business value right now. Innovation in e-commerce is quickly advancing, and augmented reality is in a position to bring a physical presence to online shopping.

Who we are

Augment is a venture-backed augmented reality software solution, helping businesses merge our physical and virtual experiences.

Augment was founded in October 2011, currently headquartered in Paris (France) with commercial offices in New York City (USA) and Orlando (USA). Now, with more than 200 clients in 36 countries, Augment is a leader in the augmented reality space, revolutionizing the entire product life cycle.

Augmented reality is the segway for brands and retailers to create a more meaningful and memorable shopping experience by helping solve the burden of e-commerce through our full software suite and AR SDK.

For retail, Augment removes the guesswork by allowing customers to try the products in augmented reality at home before buying through their smartphones or tablets. Augment is in a position to bring a physical presence to the online shopping experience.

AR has always been anticipated to change the way people see the world around them, but it will also revolutionize the way we shop online. Augment is helping solve this pain point in retail through our AR SDK. The SDK is a software development kit that allows retailers to embed AR product visualization into their existing e-commerce and mobile commerce platforms.

Want to get the Augment SDK for your e-commerce app or site? Contact us today!

Watch the Augment SDK Video