Digital Twinning: E-Tours Upgrade E-Comm

Digital twins – virtual replicas of real-life spaces – are enabling remote tours, browsing and shopping of existing brand environments. While worlds away from the fantasy-centric gaming-style spaces driving the Virtual Flagships movement, they still offer a compelling alternative to standard e-tail, fusing the reach of e-commerce with the spontaneity of physical exploration.

Access All Areas: Desktop Immersion & Monetised Metaverses

The future of storytelling-rich, shoppable virtual environments is inextricably linked to immersive tech and the gaming engines on which they’ll be built (currently mostly Unreal or Unity). But how to reach both non-gamers and those with a full virtual reality (VR) kit? Enter a new breed of brand design marrying dynamic gaming tech and 3D artistry with e-comm infrastructure to deliver desktop- and mobile-accessible immersion. 

Virtual World Service Design

Countering the formerly dominant focus on making e-commerce fast and frictionless, the mission for brands embracing these more imaginative, exploratory spaces will be adding ‘stickiness’: creating digital dwell time via vital service tools and opportunities for visitors to connect with one another. Consider live audio chat assistance, ‘squad shopping’ and ‘beaming’ humans in real time into virtual environments using augmented reality (AR).  

‘Virtu-Real’: Adding Real World Connections

As discussed in Gateways to Luxe for 2021, as consumers become increasingly attuned to a blurring of their digital and physical lives, playing to blended realities ­– where topical real-life events, products and discussions filter into otherwise fictional playscapes – will be key. Virtual festival ComplexLand enabling visitors to order real street food from virtual trucks is just one example.

Personalised Brandscapes & The Virtual Prosumer

Prosumers – consumers who co-create – are a growing breed that expect both exciting online experiences and the opportunity to reinterpret/personalise them. Several canny platforms are letting users make their mark by customising environments and objects, while B2B-focused technologists are allowing brands to create and revamp virtual showrooms (the space and the visual merchandising) at speed.