Product visuals are the first of many touchpoints in a customer’s buying journey, and often a determinant of whether they’ll get to the next phase, or the last and most important one: checkout. Over the past few years, more consumers have become unsatisfied with just product-accurate photos and videos represented in 2D. Now, they look for a sensory product experience—visuals that are interactive, immersive and lifelike in 3D. They want a picture of a car elevated to one they can tilt, rotate and zoom into its interior. They want to imagine the driving experience through the lighting-accentuated features of the vehicle.
For over two decades, KeyShot’s 3D rendering tools (now called KeyShot Studio) have helped companies create the immersive product experience that customers long for. One of several case studies is Under Armour, the sports apparel company that pivoted to KeyShot’s 3D rendering tools 5 years ago and upped their visuals game. Justin Schlothauer, the company’s lead design engineer, considers KeyShot’s 3D visuals as more than renderings, calling them digital products because of their real-life product accuracy.
Creating an immersive product experience through visuals is only the start with 3D rendering software, though—many more underexplored benefits could boost sales and elevate your ecommerce business. Wondering how to get started on 3D rendering tools, what uses CGI serves, and the benefits it promises? Sit tight. This article gets into all the good stuff.
3D Rendering and CGI Use Cases
The question many ecommerce business leaders will immediately ask when trying out 3D and CGI technology is: How would 3D rendering actually help ecommerce businesses differently? Well, in a lot of ways as it turns out. Let’s look at the big three.
Create hundreds of product images and animations/videos with ease
“We see three clear opportunities, all starting with the 3D data that is readily available within companies,” said KeyShot CEO Claus Thorsgaard. “First, improve employee productivity by leveraging this data to avoid asset duplication or manufacturing errors. Second, increase revenue via more rapid product iteration, by using 3D data to create digital prototypes in place of physical prototypes. Third, increase conversions with 3D product visualizations in sales and marketing.”
If you’re getting marketing right, you’re probably constantly looking to build up buzz for your products ahead of their release using vivid visual assets. Pre-launch marketing is this decade’s marketing big thing. But how do you accomplish this when the product is still in production? A reliable 3D rendering software changes the game for you.
HiViz, a vehicle LED light company, utilized KeyShot Studio’s 3D rendering tool to produce realistic representations of their future products for marketing campaigns, allowing them to produce realistic visuals before the physical product was ready. Razor’s marketing team could easily swap out colors and sticker configurations to swiftly generate several options for their electric scooters using KeyShot Studio. With KeyShot, they had several dozen images to drive pre-launch marketing and cut down cost, human effort, and time constraints into seamless productivity.
Using KeyShot places you several steps ahead of your competitors as high-quality visual materials are no longer a time-consuming or expensive endeavor: as soon as you have your CAD model finalized, you can create an infinite amount of photo-realistic renderings for your marketing, ecommerce site, and packaging.
Showcase hidden features
Many products don’t sell today because their selling points—usually the technical and supportive features—are hidden. But 3D visuals let you comprehensively highlight them in ways customers can even interact with. One perk of KeyShot’s 3D visualization software is capturing all possible angles of your product and putting them in the spotlight.
If you’re selling a piece of furniture, customers can now see beyond its plushness or sturdiness. They can also explore how it would look pressed up against a wall, how the furniture’s anchor could blend against their carpet, and how it’ll fit in different room sizes. KeyShot’s 3D render engine utilizes several features including exploded and cutaway views to lucidly express every aspect of your product, convey tones, and describe real-life usability even more than professional photographs will. Looking for a change from the usual customer patronage numbers? Boost conversion? Sell like never before? Then you want customers to see all the features of your products and you want a software that helps you easily encapsulate them: KeyShot Studio.
Design, engineering, marketing and packaging teams play pivotal roles across the product go-to-market journey, but they lack the technology to carry advanced visualizations from first sketch to market delivery. KeyShot calls this concept “Product Design-to-Market,” consolidating leading 3D Visualization and Digital Asset Management software, and helping product companies facilitate a more efficient and collaborative journey from initial product sketch to market delivery.
“We envision a future where companies spend days instead of months designing a product; seamlessly deliver visual assets across go-to-market channels in a few clicks; and designers, engineers, and marketers work seamlessly together, without friction or confusion,” Thorsgaard said.
How 3D Visuals and CGI Can Elevate Your Ecommerce Business
Notice how ecommerce has largely shifted to visually-immersive social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram? It’s the visuals. Other features that Instagram offers—like engagement metrics and purchasing pattern data—are simply add-ons. The evidence is clear: customers go wherever the best visuals are.
Improved Ecommerce sales
A potential customer is 11 times more likely to purchase your product when they see it in 3D. They have a clear understanding of the product and are less likely to abandon their cart due to uncertainties. For you, this means increased sales. Many founders who have used KeyShot’s 3D rendering software corroborate this statistic with real-time feedback. One of them is BlendJet, America’s pint-sized blender company. Switching from photos of the BlendJet to KeyShot renders immediately increased their website conversion rate and sales by 20%.
Decreased product return rates
3D visuals reduce return rates, helping customers more easily understand the size, color, texture, and other details (especially hidden features) better than typical 2D visuals. One of the most common return causes is “item not as described” — and with a scientifically accurate visual, that matches the real item down to the smallest detail, customers are much less likely to be disappointed.
Improved Customer Loyalty
Your customers detest when they can’t see your product well enough to understand how it’ll solve their needs. Accurate and interactive 3D visuals and CGI build out a seamless and satisfying shopping experience for them and will encourage them to return for more purchases. Sometimes you don’t need to spend so much money on follow-up email marketing. You just need to get visuals right.
Outstanding marketing using high-end 3D visual materials also intrigues customers. If they associate your business with cutting-edge technology and superior service, from your use of advanced visuals, they’re likely to develop a strong affinity for you and stay very close.
It’s Time to Make the Move 3D
To stay on top of today’s quickly evolving ecommerce world, entrepreneurs need to be ready to make calculated pivots that directly respond to new buying behaviors. The world is now immensely visually-driven and your ecommerce business should be too. Forward-thinking entrepreneurs find the best 3D visual software and reap from the large sales it’ll help their ecommerce business drive. Many entrepreneurs choose KeyShot, others look elsewhere.
