Virtual Showrooms: A Simple (But Complete) Guide

When something doesn’t work as it used to, businesses find innovative and creative ways to change that. Change is inevitable, and those who don’t adapt to it are left behind. When Covid struck, the virtual showroom spiked in popularity. Physically visiting a location wasn’t possible, so instead of shutting down their stores, businesses turned to 360 virtual showrooms.

Now, things are seemingly back to normal (or at least heading that way) but that doesn’t mean that buying habits haven’t been irreversibly changed. It’s more important than ever for brick and mortar businesses to connect with customers where they are spending their time. A virtual showroom gives businesses both a physical location and one on the web. Learn why virtual showroom is both the present and the future of virtual shopping, how it helps grow different businesses everywhere, and how your business can take advantage of online showroom now.

What Is a Virtual Showroom

A virtual showroom is simply a digital twin of a physical showroom, created by 3D scanning the space. This online showroom is a place where customers can browse, learn about products, and even shop directly from a showroom that’s accessible 24/7 online. This creates an immersive experience for customers without them having to leave the comfort of their homes.

Virtual showrooms elevate your brand and remove borders between physical and virtual reality. Customers can explore your business, offers, and merchandise whenever they feel like it, without worrying whether images are truthful because digital showrooms represent reality 100%.

Having a 3D virtual showroom on your website will increase time spent on a page, reduce bounce rates, make visitors come back, increase traffic and most importantly skyrocket your sales. Buying experience will be immersive and simple, making it a no-brainer for customers to buy from you over and over again.

Karl-Benz-Kitchens-virtual-showroom — Customers can explore products in a way not possible with a traditional landing page

Benefits of Online Showroom

Let’s say you have both a physical store and a webshop. Visiting your webshop is easy, while the physical store requires both time and energy, as well as a car and other expenses. This means that customers have to plan on visiting, and plans don’t always go through.

The problem with traditional web shops is that people worry whether images and details are in reality as they are described. If it’s a £10 t-shirt, they may go through with it and actually buy. But with more complex and expensive products like a bathroom or kitchen, that’s not the case. The solution is to combine the best of both worlds and have an online showroom on your website where they can see for themselves every detail of the product you’re selling as if they visited the store. What are the other benefits of a virtual showroom?

You’re not limited to customers that are close to your store. Grow your business with customers from anywhere.
Display everything you have to offer in one place, with a virtual reality showroom.
Get better results from your marketing efforts with the innovative approach and immersive shopping experience for customers.
Sell 24/7 without being limited to open hours, holidays, and days off.
Add product links directly into the virtual showroom and let your customers buy the moment they want to.
Enrich your website with interactive content and increase time spent on a page, clicks, and traffic, and don’t worry about short attention spans, because virtual showrooms both grab and keep attention.
Save time and money by hosting your store on the web, instead of opening stores in multiple locations.
Link the virtual showroom to your google maps and increase your visibility to those searching for the products you sell

Virtual showrooms also can be a great tool to aid in planning, proudct placement, health and safety training, compliance and more.

Read on and find out which businesses grow with virtual showrooms and how you can grow yours as well!

A virtual showroom is created by 3D scanning the phyiscal space

Which Businesses Grow With Digital Showrooms

The digital showroom is an extremely popular tool, especially in the automotive and home decor industries. Pretty much all of the most popular car brands from all around the world have a virtual showroom on their website that attracts and converts visitors into customers.

But a digital showroom is not only for big brands. What other businesses can grow by implementing virtual showrooms on their websites?

Stores with consumer goods:

Whether it’s sneakers or microwaves, stores that sell consumer goods can benefit greatly from virtual showrooms. Businesses that utilise it get more social media attention, offer their customers unmatched buying experience and capitalise on buying intent their customers feel in the moment.

Home Decor:

Let’s take IKEA for example. They don’t allow their customers to imagine what their new IKEA kitchen will look like. Instead, they immediately show a potential customer what their reality could look like. Both at their physical location and on IKEA’s website. They use virtual reality to create customizable online showrooms, with data points and links to the products.

Jewellery stores:

Some jewellery stores take full advantage of virtual showrooms by implementing every product they offer into it, with links to buy the product easily. But not only that. Some also allow customers to try on a piece of jewellery and experience the full power of virtual reality. While this is not a standard yet, it’s certainly a near future.

Furniture manufacturers:

Furniture manufacturers use virtual showrooms to vividly represent how a piece of furniture would look for example in a living room or in a bedroom. People who’re browsing through furniture can easily see how well it would fit in their home and decide faster to buy.

Fashion brands:

Fashion brands love to experiment, right? They’ve seen first hand how powerful online showrooms can be compared to images of the clothing. Especially when we are talking about high-fashion brands. They’ve realised they need to stand out, and virtual showrooms are the perfect way to do it.

Real estate agents

Real estate agents use virtual reality to show a property from every angle to thousands of potential buyers, without having to show them in person. They save both time and money, as virtual showrooms are extremely cost-effective.

With virtual showrooms, real estate agents can easily show and sell or rent a space without going through the hassle of visiting the physical location hundreds of times.

Other retail businesses

Similar to the examples below, any retail business can take advantage of a virtual showroom. Everything they have to do is to have an expert scan their property and create a virtual representation of their physical store.

Now it’s only left for you to create your own!

How to Create a Virtual Showroom

The virtual showroom is created by 3D scanning the space and truthfully represents your physical showroom. To create a virtual showroom, you need expertise, proper equipment, and specific digital showroom software to make it as appealing as ever.

You can research virtual showroom service providers in your area and see their portfolios to get a feel for their expertise. When creating an online showroom, it’s also not enough to just publish a 3D virtual showroom and call it a day. Incorporate interactive data points and links for a seamless shopping experience.

Some brands have also opted to go full virtual and build a showroom without using a physical space. These virtual showrooms are created by using a mix of marketing, e-commerce and game development tools. Creating an online showroom in this way allows for some really creative end results but is also much more costly due to the custom development required.

The Best Virtual Showroom Examples

Let’s cut the theory and jump straight into examples. Check out some virtual showroom examples that are created for different purposes and businesses, to see how online showroom helps grow brands.

Don’t forget to use virtual showrooms across all of your channels for the best results. Even when you can’t post it to be as interactive as on your website, you can still post high-quality 4k images derived from it!

Create Your Virtual Showroom

Learn how Scene3D creates virtual showrooms for different businesses, check out our simple 4-step process to the perfect digital showroom, and get a quote today to have us create one for you!

We take pride in being a virtual showroom service provider that takes care of their clients, works on a project until you’re 100% satisfied, and lives for generating tangible results for our clients. Get in touch and let’s create your online showroom!