Snap, the social media company, unveiled AR Enterprise Services (ARES) to offer its known expertise in AR tools to businesses. A ‘Shopping Suite’ is being offered as part of the launch to brands that can help them get more customers.
The new enterprise solution will integrate Snap’s Augmented Reality (AR) tools into businesses with ease and at scale.
Through this offering, consumers will enjoy immersive and personalised experiences with their favourite brands, with a suite of advanced tools designed to increase confidence in their purchases.
Over 250 million people engage with AR on the platform every day, said the company. Snapchat has 375 million daily active users and the company claimed that since January 2021 shopping-related AR lenses have been used over 5 billion times by users.
The company’s partners, including Amazon and Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart, use AR Lenses to let people try on apparel and accessories.
The new Shopping Suite from Snap will have four features, which are:
- AR try-on to virtually try new styles of clothing, accessories and footwear where users can upload an image of themselves and see how they might look with these items.
- 3D viewer to look at any product from various angles.
- Sizing and fitting recommendations tech based on the body shape of the user.
- Enterprise manager to host and manage digital assets, using Snap’s SDK to create AR experiences, look at performance analytics and help from the Snap team to customise client solutions.
These features can be directly integrated into any company’s app or website so they can be engaged by customers when checking out products.
The company has been working on building up AR services for a while. A start-up called Fit Analytics was acquired by the company in 2021, which helped customers find the right-sized apparel and footwear from online retailers.
It also added commerce-related features to its AR Lens creator in 2021. With Snap’s acquisitions of Forma and Vertebrae, in 2022, Snap introduced tools for virtual try-on and converting images into 3D assets. The Lens Cloud back-end service was also launched by Snap for lens developers. All of these technologies will be combined into a single package for enterprise customers.
“Over the last decade, we’ve been hard at work bringing fun and personal AR experiences to Snapchatters. In the next decade, we’re excited to take our world-class AR technology to business’ websites and apps. We look forward to making the shopping experience more delightful for consumers and transforming businesses around the world with AR Enterprise Services,” Jill Popelka, head of AR Enterprise Services at Snap, said in a statement.
This SaaS (Software as a Service) offering has been tested with some customers already, including sunglasses seller Goodr, clothing company Princess Polly and Mongolian manufacturer Gobi Cashmere. Snap claimed these retailers have seen higher conversion rates, better engagement with products and lower return rates.
