Today, more than ever, companies are asking: “How can we progress in this competitive digital world?”
Now a days, everyone, from employees to customers, expects a simple and fast streamlined interaction as digital consumer experiences became an important aspect of online retailing. Meanwhile, technology has become more and more accessible around the world and the price of computing and devices is falling all the time causing companies to change the way they develop, deliver, advertise and support their products and services.
Given this challenging environment, many online retailers are changing their strategies in order to create a clear distinction between their products and competitors. They are creating real customer experiences based on sight and interaction with their products.
How IKEA changed their strategy through CGI
The use of CGI in online retailing has increased drastically over the past few years, and it doesn’t seem like it will stop here. For example, IKEA, the most popular home furnishing company, has stated that they use CGI to create as much as 75% of their product offering. What is the reason behind this decision? Fast company states that:
“The best special effects are often the ones you never notice — which may make Ikea the most skilful special effects studio in the world.“
This would explain the transition IKEA has been incorporating into their marketing strategy. If in 2012 only 25% of the products were created using CGI, Wall Street Journal reported that by today, 75% of their products are computer generated.
CGI Society talks about IKEA’s decision to transition more towards CGI as an improvement to their current approach:
“The IKEA team didn’t feel there was anything wrong with traditional photography, quality-wise. Like any company, they just wanted to make things easier for the team to work on - to make the process simpler, cheaper and faster.”
As we can see, big online retailers are changing the game by taking advantage of newer, faster and cheaper solutions in order to keep everything on track and continuously expand to larger audiences. Not only can CGI allow you to complete photo shoots in a shorter time, but companies who are already using this solution have found that they’re better able at evoking the desired emotional response from their online customer base and creating a greater visual impact of their brand.
Given the number of advantages, CGI has become the preferred technology for many retailers within fashion, home, furnishing, automotive, travel and many others.
But why should your online retail brand consider using CGI instead of traditional photography?
Optimising for e-commerce
It can be rather difficult adjusting the photographs of your product imagery in order to display them on your website at the desired resolution and size, in varied colors and textures and in different combinations.
Whether you’re attempting to create the perfect thumbnail image or reformat the logo of your product, things can go wrong in no time. Traditional post-production methods have been giving online retailers headaches for quite a while now.
However, with CGI you’re able to create the perfectly pixelated version of all of your products, that can correct for illegible labelling as well as easily resize to fit any thumbnail experience you want to create on your e-commerce website. Moxels offers a smooth process in which you can always get in touch with our experts for any design ideas you might have.
Evoke the desired emotional response.
We have previously talked about why story-telling it’s important for you as a brand. Visual experiences are an integrated part of story-telling and they’re able to create a strong bond between customers and brands.
CGI is more than a tool for getting your brand’s product cycle to market - it is more about introducing potential clients to the lifestyle that your business can offer them.
Traditional production methods for creating the right mood around a product can be costly and take a lot of time to complete. With CGI you can create several scenes which can then be adjusted in order to help highlight your product’s best assets and therefore create a whole new experience for them.
Accelerating your time to market.
Brands across sectors are often tied up to deadlines when it comes to delivering their product imagery to their distribution partners in a timely manner.
However, CGI removes this burden for you and you can get images to your retail and distribution partners in a much faster way in order to promote your pre-product launch. This, of course, offers a greater ability to sell your product stock before all pieces have been produced.
We have previously worked on projects like these, and one of the most recent ones is Bridgewater Wharf by Fortis Group. They have been able to already create promotional materials for the building and promote it even if it hasn’t been fully finished yet. This has offered them a clear advantage over their competitors on the market in terms of sales.
Capturing the future.
If there is one thing which people won’t do, that is going back to old-fashioned, impractical ways. We won’t go back to making cars, movies, products the old-fashioned way because we want to seek, instead, the best opportunities for growth and development. Companies like M&S, Habitat, Volvo and other manufacturers have understood that and continue to set the tone for the world of retail through various approaches such as CGI.
For instance, back in 2011, Volvo developed a product video for its concept car, which was introduced to its audiences before it was built. The company didn’t even need the product in order to impress the audiences. Volvo’s use of CGI was explained by Automotive News as a method of “relying more on virtual cars to substitute for physical prototypes in marketing, allowing them to significantly cut the time it takes to begin publicising a vehicle”.
Conclusion.
Not every online retail business is ready to adapt CGI solution into its marketing flow, that is clear. However, as CGI evolves into an everyday tool used by top businesses, it will be very important for all retail companies to evaluate the cost-saving benefits that CGI can provide to their business as well as being able to create an improved customer experience.
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