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When we think of digital interfaces, they’re usually bright and white. But dark-themed designs have a place in a more sustainable future. And this is something we care about. 

Back in 2022, Google determined that a completely white screen uses around six times the energy of an entirely black screen. You might worry that a darker design will make your website dull. But dark can be sophisticated and when complemented with muted tones or brighter colours, can really give your brand a memorable look. 

Not only are darker colour palettes better for the planet, but they also benefit your users. How? Darker designs mean a longer battery life. 

So, have a browse and enjoy our dark mode. 


welcome to dark mode.

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Selecting The Right eCommerce Agency For Your Business.

get ready for peak trading.

how ecommerce brands are using augmented reality.

If you own a physical retail store that is in a bad location, has a leaky roof and is costing you too much in rent, what would you do? You’d move, of course. So why should you put up with an eCommerce platform that is causing you similar levels of frustration and expense? You shouldn’t.

Replatforming is the process of moving from one eCommerce platform to another. While this kind of project can sound like a potential headache, working with the right agency can make it a simple task with endless benefits.

In this article, we talk through why replatforming could be the solution to your eCommerce woes, cover the potential risks involved and show you how to get started with taking the first steps towards a brighter future.

Perhaps your eCommerce store doesn’t have the digital version of a leaky roof. Maybe it works fine and you’re getting a steady flow of reasonable income from it. It doesn’t crash (too often) and you don’t get (too many) complaints from customers. But could it do better?

The world of eCommerce is always evolving, so standing still for too long means getting left behind. There are plenty of ways in which switching to a new platform can have a positive impact on your business.

Here are just some of the reasons why you might benefit from replatforming:

There’s nothing more frustrating in eCommerce than wanting to add exciting new functionality before realising your platform or agency can’t support the new addition.

It’s impossible to predict when choosing a platform what you might need in a year or two, so it’s important to choose a platform that can innovate and grow with you. Maybe it’s on the cards to expand into new markets, but if your platform can’t support this functionality, you either need to put them on ice or start looking for one that will.

Another way you can be held back by the wrong eCommerce platform is when it comes to scaling up. Even Amazon had to start out small but can you imagine if it was still running with the same technology today?

Your store might not be getting Amazon traffic levels but a sudden rise in popularity could see your existing platform overwhelmed by the volume. This leads to a poor user experience and slow loading speeds which puts users off coming back, wasting a golden opportunity for growth and conversions.

Even in quieter times, it could be that your store offers an underwhelming user experience. You need to keep up with the kind of UX that your competitors are offering their customers while making it unique to your brand and story. If your platform can’t compete with AR/VR or new payment gateways, people will be more likely to take their money elsewhere.

If you’re working with a legacy platform or one that was built bespoke for you, there can be issues with new regulations that have gone into force since your site was built. This leaves you open to issues with compliance that would be handled for you by a more modern and adaptive platform.

Another common issue with legacy solutions is that they often struggle to 

 If your eCommerce store needs to work with ERP software or a PIM solution or an EPOS system, you may find that it’s not possible or doesn’t work as smoothly as you need. Again, this can hold back your growth and cause lasting headaches for your team.

You might expect some resistance to replatforming because of the anticipated costs involved, but did you know you could actually end up saving money? This is because switching can involve removing existing technology that is expensive to maintain. For example, you might need an in-house team to manage your website but you could save on these costs with a fully agency-managed solution.

Of course, there are also risks involved with replatforming your eCommerce store and you need to be aware of these before making the decision to go ahead. Working with an experienced agency can mitigate many of these risks, but here are some of the potential challenges:

Replatforming is always intended to be as seamless as possible, but this can depend on the original site’s structure and coding. This can result in the potential for data to be corrupted or lost altogether. However, you can protect yourself against this possibility by implementing thorough back-up procedures, conducting extensive data testing and making sure the migration is performed by experienced experts.

One major concern you might have about migrating from one platform to another is that, at some point, your store might have to be made unavailable to customers. The longer this downtime, the more inconvenience to customers and the more revenue you are missing out on. If you have a high profile site, you could even suffer reputational damage on social media.

But this can be mitigated. Coming up with a comprehensive migration plan, scheduling the downtime for when you usually have low traffic and communicating the expected unavailability to customers will help avoid this being a problem.

Replatforming can also result in issues with compatibility and integration between the old site and the new one. But with the right planning and procedures, any bugs can be worked out with minimum disruption. This involves a thorough compatibility analysis and rigorous testing, conducted by experts.

Another aspect that needs to be factored into your planning is making sure your staff actually know how to use the new platform. After all, if they are unfamiliar with it, this opens you up to mistakes that impact customer service. Again, this can be avoided by working with an experienced partner agency who can provide training and get your team up to speed ahead of the launch.

A real risk from replatforming is that you can do damage to your existing SEO rankings when pages and site structure suddenly change. But with the right precautions taken through an 

, you can ensure there are no nasty surprises for Google’s search spiders.

Big projects can have costs that over-run and this can happen with replatforming projects too, especially when there are unforeseen complexities or customisation requests. Again, this can be mitigated through preparation, like running a thorough cost analysis and feasibility study and creating a contingency budget. Working with an agency with a reputation for detail in their 

If you’ve ever spent time wandering your local supermarket looking for the sauce selection after they’ve moved things around on the shelves, you’ll know how disorienting it can be. This can happen in eCommerce too, resulting in frustration and confusion.

That’s why we typically advise against very drastic changes to the site’s design, but even these can be mitigated with 

 as well as gathering feedback to address any potential pain points.

And finally, the one reason that leaves people too scared to make big changes - what if you make it worse? Picking the wrong platform or the wrong agency can lead to an even more unreliable eCommerce site and more troubles than you had before. This is why you need to get these decisions right, conducting thorough supplier evaluations, reviewing any customer testimonials and case studies and finding an agency and platform with proven track records.

Each of the risks above should give you an idea of the challenges that come with replatforming, but none of them should put you off taking this step when the time is right. All of them are easily mitigated if you are working with the right platform and the right agency.

At Statement, we have years of experience helping clients replatform successfully for big name brands such as NEOM and Cloud Nine - 

you can read some of our case studies here

, and see how we can help you take your eCommerce site to the next level?

five wooden blocks in a line with the word loading above

replatforming your eCommerce store: what you need to know

5 Ways to Increase Conversions with Personalisation.

social commerce: why you should care.

reverse commerce: putting reduce, reuse, recycle at the forefront of your brand.

What is a customer worth to you? Knowing the answer to that question is key to ensuring success and longevity for your business and that’s the concept behind customer lifetime value.

Understanding customer lifetime value (CLV) means being able to use it to shape your plans. In the world of eCommerce, it’s easier than ever to get this data, track it and use the right tools to maximise it. But let’s go back to the start to understand what customer lifetime value is.

Customer lifetime value is how much your average customer is worth to you across the course of their relationship with your business. In a nutshell, it’s the idea that your customers will keep coming back over and over because they’ve been so pleased with your products/services and customer service.

It goes without saying that having a higher customer lifetime value is better because repeat customers are more valuable to your business. If your CLV is worryingly low, improvements need to be made. But there’s more to it than just an average figure, especially if you are prepared to dig into the data.

What are the benefits of focusing on CLV?

One hard and fast rule of business is that it’s preferable to retain customers rather than constantly trying to attract new ones. Retention requires less effort and less expense than attraction and it’s usually easier to predict.

Focusing on CLV means focusing on customer retention and adding value for your customers so that they can be of greater value to you. Repeat customers can be the lifeblood of a business because they can bring a steady cash flow while also boosting your profit margin by costing less than new customers. This helps to reduce the size of your customer acquisition budgets.

In turn, this gives you more money to invest in the business, while the additional data you get from lifetime customers can help you make the right decisions as well as keeping them happy and loyal.

Understanding CLV can also help reduce your lifetime value (LTV) to customer acquisition costs (CAC) ratio, 

. Their research showed that the average CAC is between £100 and £370, depending on the industry. They recommend a ratio of 3:1 as a sign of efficient sales and marketing.

But how do you calculate customer lifetime value? There are different models for achieving this. HubSpot picks two - 

Predictive CLV is built upon machine learning to forecast the buying behaviour of your customers, allowing you to identify your most valuable customers, products and services.

Historical CLV uses your existing data to predict the value of customers based on their average order value. A potential downside to this is that it doesn’t consider various reasons why existing customers might stop buying from you.

If you’re looking for a simple way to calculate a customer lifetime value, try multiplying your average purchase value by the average number of purchases. Then multiply that by the average customer lifespan and you’ll have a customer lifetime value figure to work with.

But that’s not all you can do with CLV. 

 segmenting your customers using RFM (recency, frequency and monetary value). Recency is the last time a customer made a purchase, with the assumption being that the more recent the purchase, the more likely another will be made soon.

Frequency, of course, is how many purchases have been made within a time frame, with those customers making the most purchases seen as most likely to return. And finally, monetary value is about how much has been spent - you can probably work out how this relates to the likelihood of coming back for more.

Segmenting this way helps you work out which of these factors has the greatest influence on your CLV. All this data is available within Shopify, which is a reminder of how crucial it is to find an eCommerce platform that empowers you to make informed decisions about your business based on website activity.

Knowing how to increase customer lifetime value doesn’t need to be rocket science. There are a number of different steps you can take to ensure your customers feel valued and motivated to keep coming back to you for more of the same.

Some of this is the basics of running a successful eCommerce business: offering good customer service by doing what you say you’ll do, when you’ve said you’ll do it. But beyond this, there are ways you can keep these customers buying from you.

 This can start with the onboarding process after the first time they make a purchase. 

and send a follow-up message with information about your brand, offers to thank them and encourage them to come back to your website. This can be the start of a connection and this email can set the tone for your future interactions.

 Building up a positive and lasting relationship is a two-way thing, of course, and making customers feel valued sometimes means listening as well as broadcasting to them. Involving them in your decision-making processes through email feedback or social media polls - and being sure to publicise when these have made a difference - can help to engender the kind of brand loyalty that makes a big difference to CLV.

-selling: Upselling and cross-selling are both important tools for any eCommerce strategy when they are done effectively. They can also boost your customer lifetime value because they can increase your average order value, with even small additions to each purchase adding up to greater profitability and CLV.

: You can also use your customers to showcase your products by building brand communities, encouraging them to leave 

customer reviews and sharing user-generated content 

on your site and social media. All of this helps engage existing customers and attract new ones, with minimum effort on your part.

Work

 is important and another way to achieve this is by using loyalty platforms like 

, which offer rewards that increase your purchase frequency from repeat customers.

: Delivering an omnichannel experience is another powerful tool for customer retention. Knowing where your customers are in terms of social media is crucial as is delivering customer service that’s readily available. However a customer comes across your brand, their experience should be cohesive and responsive.

Customer lifetime value can take time to work out and to understand how best to interpret it for your eCommerce site, your products and your customers. However, it is still a hugely important metric for you to consider thanks to the many benefits of having loyal repeat customers.

If you want to find out more about how to maximise your CLV at a time when a difficult financial landscape is making it hard for retailers to increase their revenue, why not 

 and find out what Statement can do for you?

What is customer lifetime value and why should you care?

idhl group is named prolific north’s number one digital agency for the second year running.

idhl Announces Newly Appointed Commercial Director.

idhl group named the no1 digital agency by prolific north.

idhl Group have announced the arrival of a new CEO. Ben Wood joins the North’s largest digital agency group from his VP position at Meta and looks forward to driving the next period of growth at one of the fastest growing digital agencies in the UK.

“Ben has a background in growing businesses to a significant scale and has a thorough understanding of the market. He is the ideal person to guide us into our next chapter and I look forward to working more closely with him over these coming months.’

Ben, who started at the Group today said, “After seven brilliant years with Meta, I couldn’t be more excited to be stepping back into the agency world with idhl.

idhl is unparalleled in the quality, breadth, and scope of its digital offering, and in its growth story and ambition.

In partnership with Dennis, Bridgepoint, and the incredible team of 420 people across the Group, I can’t wait to contribute to the continued momentum of the business as we build something that redefines the digital agency space and continues to deliver incredible results for our clients.“

Dennis Engel will now move into the role of Group CEO and will continue to provide strategic guidance to Ben and work closely with him, and the rest of the leadership team.

ben wood leaves meta to join idhl group as ceo.

Gifting: Are You Ready for Peak?

How Shopify Scripts Can Maximise Bundling for Peak Trading.

Preparing For Peak Trading with COVID-19.

what to read next.

Peak is approaching and it’s approaching fast. After 

Shopify merchants reported record-breaking results

 last Black Friday Cyber Monday, will this year’s peak excel last year’s results or be impacted by a tougher financial climate? Only time will tell but failing to prepare for peak is one surefire way to see your profits plummet during the busiest time of year for eCommerce.

We're taking a look at how to get your Shopify store in tip-top shape to ensure your success this peak. 

how to prepare your store for the heightened demand

why communicating with your audience before peak is so important

how to integrate your peak plan with other channels

how Shopify can help you make the most of peak

If you haven’t done so already, it’s high time you began your peak preparations. The busiest trading time of the year, BFCM and Christmas shopping can put a strain on your customer experience if you’re not well prepared.

Jonathan Healey, MD at Statement, gives us his thoughts on peak amid a more turbulent financial landscape: 

“The problem with peak for many retailers is knowing how much to invest upfront in their digital landscape. Generally speaking over the last decade digital trading has been a banker and the more you invest the better the returns. But is that still the case in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and an economy on the brink of recession?

Retailers may be tempted to adopt a “wait and see” approach this year and aim to leave any investment as late as possible. The risk here is that by the time you are ready to act your agency may be fully booked and you may have missed your opportunity. My advice would be to prepare well in advance for “Gold”, “silver” and “bronze” options during peak, be ready to push the button on all of them at a moment’s notice but commit early to completing at least your bronze list. Stepping up to silver or gold might come at a premium should you decide to do it last minute, but at that point it will almost certainly be worth it.”

Now is the time to clearly define your goals and the steps you’ll take to reach them. Here are some of the top considerations you need to consider in your peak plan:

A good place to start is by looking at last year’s performance. While it’s likely changes will occur this year, by analysing your previous data, you will be able to form a better picture of what to expect and where to focus your efforts for the best return. Consider possible trends for best selling products and when they experienced high sales demand.

It’s worth looking at which channels are driving traffic to your best sellers. Is it paid, social media, email, organic? Doing so will allow you to use this channel to drive maximum traffic to the areas you want.

Without enough stock, peak trading is set to be a bust. Using data and an understanding of what your audience is interested in, you can source the right products in the right quantities.

Promotions are the backbone of BFCM. Everyone expects a deal. Promotions, events and discounts should be considered during the planning phase. What discount is both affordable to you and attractive to your customers? Have you created marketing collateral to promote your offers? Which channels are you going to advertise them on?

Providing excellent customer service plays a big role in peak success and can help you stand out from the competition, especially during busy periods. Even better, it can also drive conversions and long-lasting customer loyalty. But don’t forget that your people are just that - people. Peak season doesn’t just put pressure on your eCommerce store, it can put pressure on your team too. It’s important to spend time preparing them on what to expect, ensuring enough staff are available to cater for your customers and that everyone’s aware of peak promotions, stock availability and delivery timescales.

The sooner you plan, the more time you’ll have to firm up your strategies and prepare for success. Fortunately, the Shopify platform is built to handle large loads such as the peak shopping season and they take extra precautions to ensure their servers don’t fall short.

Slow site speed, high bounce rates and frustrated users – poor site performance can be detrimental to your peak success. Optimising your site’s performance ahead of the shopping rush will keep your customers converting and helps to prevent site crashes.

Without a reliable platform, the seasonal traffic surge can slow down or even cause your site to crash. Tests should be run in advance to ensure your store can handle peak shopping loads.

One of the top issues during busy periods are slow pages. Research shows that 

93 percent of shoppers have left a website because it didn’t load fast enough

. With figures like these, speeding up your site could make a huge impact on your conversions. Even better, you can use 

 to calculate how your conversion rates could be improved by faster site speeds.

Getting your site navigation and search functionality in the best shape possible will help customers find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. With predictive site search, you can guide shoppers to the goods they want. 

 can considerably improve the onsite customer experience.

The holiday season is prime time for hackers to target vulnerable sites. Prevent fraud from taking hold with an 

. Using a Flow template can save you money and time spent looking for fraudulent orders. Once added to your Shopify store, emails will be sent prompting a review of high-risk orders before capturing payment to ensure you’re always aware of suspicious activity.

Google’s page speed analysis tool allows you to drill down into performance issues to see what’s causing the problem. 

 can be run against any webpage and provides audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO and more.All you have to do is provide the tool with a URL to audit and a report is generated on the quality of that page containing references on how to fix the issue(s).

During the peak shopping season, customers are often in a rush to get their shopping done. The more painless you can make your checkout process gives shoppers yet another reason to love your brand and ensures they reach conversion faster.

One way to do this is by letting shoppers skip to the cart and checkout without leaving the page they’re browsing. Using 

 places a customer’s preferred and trusted payment method through a super-fast checkout process on the product page.

Dynamic checkout buttons are great for busy shopping periods when customers want to convert fast. Checkout buttons can be third-party branded such as ‘Buy with Apple Pay’ or unbranded such as ‘Buy it now’.

In the competitive eCommerce world, how do you stand out and gain the trust of your customers? Social proof. Social proof can come in the form of reviews, images, video, testimonials and social media posts.

Now is the time to start collating this social proof and sharing it across your own digital platforms. Your website is a brilliant place to display social proof with some brands such as ASOS even using real-life customers on their product pages.

Social proof continues to be one of the most persuasive and effective methods of influencing a shopper into buying a product. To encourage your audience to provide their own social proof, why not offer them an incentive such as a 5 percent discount if they write a review. Or encourage them to tag your social account or use a community hashtag to get more people to see your brand.

If you want more tricks and insights into how to use social proof to generate more sales, take a read of our blog: 

social proof in ecommerce: what is it and why do you need it?

Preparing for large sales events can be stressful and challenging. These stresses only increase two-fold when you consider how many different sales events, promotions and discounts run through the course of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas Shopping and Boxing Day Sales.

This year, you can save your team a whole lot of trouble and those late nights by using an automated promotional tool. eCommerce automation can schedule, execute and monitor events such as sales, product releases, restocks and changes to site content.

Fortunately, Shopify has a range of tools designed to take the strain out of busy sales events. Between 

, tasks can be automated and time saved to increase efficiency and productivity. Freeing up your valuable time, you can place more focus on strategy adjustments based on real-time insights to drive more revenue.

Using Shopify to automate front and back end workflows will not only save your team precious time but also make your customer’s experience easy and fast.

Don’t leave it until the day your promotions kick-off to start communicating with your audience. This should begin well in advance of peak shopping events to build anticipation with your customers.

 is ideal to help you do just this. Make it known onsite that Wishlist is available to encourage customers to ‘love’ the products they’re interested in. Doing this will allow you to email customers if one of their desired products is discounted.

Another idea is to encourage site visitors to sign up for upcoming deals without giving away what those deals will be. This approach can be used to engage with users before they’ve even shopped with your brand. An exclusive pre-sale could be run for those who sign up, providing visitors with access to stock first before it runs out.

Not only is it important to ensure your website is prepared for peak, but you should also define your wider marketing plan to capitalise on the increase of people searching for products.

Paid media, email and social platforms are all effective channels to engage with your audience. Take a read of our top considerations to build momentum and drive traffic to your site ahead of peak:

With more people than ever before shopping online, opportunities are rife to engage with an even bigger online audience during this peak season. However, increased demand also means other businesses will be more aggressive with their promotional techniques which is why it’s so important to prepare your PPC campaigns now.

It’s worth analysing last year’s performance to give you a steer on this year’s decisions. Consider which products sold well, which pages were most visited, which messaging and promotions resonated best with your audience. Jump into your Google Analytics account to understand which landing pages were most popular so they can be optimised.

One thing customers are guaranteed to look for during peak trading is a good deal. Once you’ve decided what promotions you want to run, it’s time to start promoting those promotions! Your promos form the backbone of your digital marketing and will influence your onsite messaging, ad copy, imagery and even social media calendar. You’re looking to attract people with a deal so it’s important to start telling them about them prior to peak beginning.

 Remarketing ads can target previous website visitors to encourage them to return and convert with you. Past visitors can be targeted through remarketing lists while bids can be increased for the most valuable customers. Remarketing is often cost-effective as you already have a list of leads available to use. This means purchase intent is higher, cost per click is lower and messaging can be directed towards the right person at the right time.

If you want further guidance on how to make the most of paid media during peak, our connected specialist paid media agency, equation, wrote a blog on the topic: 

preparing for peak: what do you need to consider?

Emails are still top when it comes to engaging your audience. The customer data you gather can be used to target individuals with relevant emails based on products they’ve shown interest in on the run-up to peak. As your audience will no doubt be inundated with emails, it’s important to ensure yours stands out:

Peak shopping season is a good time to capture additional customer data for future use too. Use incentives such as a 10 percent discount to encourage people to subscribe. Not only can you enjoy a boost in conversions ahead of peak, but you can even use the data to build up your email marketing list.

Your subject lines are the first thing your audience will see when it comes to your emails. Make sure your subject lines are concise, engaging and clearly state the offer that’s up for grabs. Consider 

A/B testing your subject lines as this can help you understand what performs best

In the peak shopping frenzy, customers will likely browse numerous websites and place multiple items in their shopping carts. In many cases, these carts will be abandoned as the shopper is distracted by another product or promotion. Email can draw them back to you and encourage conversion. An additional promotional incentive could also be used.

Designing emails that your subscribers want to open and click on can be challenging. A well-designed optimised email is essential for driving engagement with your audience to generate a higher ROI. 

Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools today. Able to engage, communicate and promote your business far and wide, there are many platforms that can be used to support your peak trading season.

 Social proof such as reviews, testimonials and 

 can drive awareness, build trust and convert users into loyal customers. 

UGC in particular is great for both your eCommerce store and social media. Content that your audience has already created and posted featuring your products can be reshared (with permission) to your brand’s accounts. This is a tactic we deployed for 

 which helped them promote how effective their products really are with the use of real-life customers.

Once you’ve settled on those all-important promotions and sales events, it’s important to advertise them. Social media channels are effective for building excitement around an event. Through the use of stories, polls, regular posts and communications with your audience, you can get more people interested in your promotions before they even launch.

Many social platforms today offer their own, native shopping functionality built into the app. Providing your customs with more than one place to shop makes the purchasing and conversion process even easier. Selling products directly within the app allows customers to browse, research, engage and convert all in one place. Fortunately, Shopify has a whole range of 

 including ones for social media channels such as 

A common issue merchants struggle with during busy shopping periods is coping with the big influx in traffic. As a hosted platform, Shopify means your store is built to handle peak performance all year round.

Thanks to Shopify’s infrastructure, the platform is a secure and reliable option for eCommerce stores – this is one of the main reasons brands choose to switch to them. Fast and dependable with unlimited bandwidth and 99.9 percent average uptime means you can rest easy knowing your site is performing at its best during the busiest time of the year.

As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, Shopify takes care of the technology so you can focus on your business. Always striving to maximise stores powered by Shopify, they continuously improve server-side performance such as hosting, security and stability.

Make the most of the peak shopping period with a post-peak plan. With so many incentives, promotions and sales events flying around, this isn’t just a chance to drive revenue. Peak can be beneficial for your business into the new year and beyond.

By avoiding site slowdowns, connecting your customers to the products they want and letting them checkout fast, your sales are set to soar this peak season. To find out how we can support you in driving your best peak performance so far, 

get in touch with our team of eCommerce experts

idhl Group has once again been named the Number One Digital Agency in the Prolific North Top 50 Digital Agencies. Achieving this recognition for two years running, this award is a testament to the hard work and results delivered by idhl Group.

Going from strength to strength, the Group has been a consistent name in the top 10 in recent years, before taking the top spot for the first time in 2022. The rankings are based on a number of factors including headcount, turnover, profit and growth. Maintaining the number one title showcases the Group’s continued success in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Dennis Engel, CEO of the idhl Group, had this to say on the win:

‘To achieve this accolade last year was such a wonderful moment. Seeing the team celebrating at the event and to receive a deluge of messages of support was something I won’t forget. But to achieve this for a second year running is truly incredible, especially in a volatile commercial landscape. I’d like to say a massive thanks and congratulations to everyone in the Group for contributing to our ongoing success. Let’s keep up the good work and see what the future brings!’

idhl Group is made up of nine specialists agencies who collaboratively offer a breadth of experience and expertise that spans a myriad of technologies, services, and sectors. From email marketing and web experts to search and paid media specialists, the idhl Group consists of WMG, Ingenuity Digital, equation, NetConstruct, Statement, Pinpoint, Fostr, Ampersand and Conesso.

To celebrate the announcement, Prolific North will be hosting an event in July for all agencies in the top 50 to come together. 

common barriers to ecommerce growth.

getting the lowdown on shopify’s latest features with dan conboy.

Imagine a world where you can see virtual objects superimposed onto real life. Imagine interacting with them and experiencing a whole new level of immersion. That's the power of Augmented Reality (AR). A cutting-edge technology that’s rapidly transforming the way we perceive and interact with our surroundings.

But does AR have a role to play in the world of eCommerce? In short, yes, it does. Several brands are already leveraging the possibilities it brings to take customer engagement to a whole new level. In this article, we’ll explain everything you need to know about AR and how we can help introduce it to your eCommerce brand.



Let’s start with the basics - what is augmented reality? AR is a technology that blends digital content with the physical world, overlaying computer-generated graphics, videos, or audio onto the user's real-world environment in real-time. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), which immerses users into a completely virtual environment, AR enhances the user's perception of the real world by adding a layer of virtual content on top.

AR can be experienced through various devices, such as smartphones, tablets, smart glasses, and headsets. These devices use sensors, cameras, and software to detect the user's environment before positioning virtual objects accordingly to create an interactive and immersive experience.

One of the key features of AR that makes it so engaging when used effectively in the world of eCommerce is its interactivity. Users can mirror a real-life experience by interacting with virtual objects to manipulate them, and even trigger actions or animations. For example, you can play a virtual game on your coffee table, try on virtual clothes to see how they fit, or follow step-by-step instructions for assembling furniture.

AR has the potential to revolutionize numerous industries, including gaming, entertainment, retail, healthcare, education, and more. But how popular is it already? 

According to Gartner, an estimated 100 million consumers used AR to shop in 2020

, with its popularity enhanced due to rolling global lockdowns that prevented people from visiting shops.

Plus, 80 percent of shoppers are highlighting just how important the shopping experience has become to them. Equal importance is now being placed by many on both the shopping experience and the product itself. In addition, an impressive 

69 percent of customers are willing to pay extra

 for value-added services that can enhance their overall user experience.

Alongside this, nearly half of those businesses surveyed by 

 expressed interest in using "metaverse" technology, such as AR and VR, for their shopping needs within the next five years.

The number of us with mobile AR active devices 

, from 0.44 billion in 2019 to 1.4 billion in 2023 and it’s expected to rise further to 1.73 billion in 2024. That’s a huge potential marketplace. The question is no longer whether augmented reality apps can play a role in your eCommerce business, but when it will be.

AR is transforming the way consumers shop online. With AR, users can virtually try on clothes, accessories, or makeup before making a purchase, allowing them to see how the products look without physically trying them on. This helps reduce returns and improve customer satisfaction. AR is also being used in virtual showrooms, where users can visualise how furniture or home decor will look in their own space before making a purchase decision.

One of the most popular tools for using AR is Snapchat. While this may have lost some of its buzz to TikTok, it is still being used by big name brands like Nike. Nike enable users to customise and virtually try on a pair of Nike Air Force 1s with a digital 360-degree overlay so users can see how they would look on their feet in real life. Of course, if they look good, there’s a Shop Now button to buy the shoes with ease.

A chair can be seen in a living room setting using AR

The likes of IKEA, Apple, DFS and Amazon have also embraced the possibilities of using AR to preview a purchase in the real world. IKEA Place 

Expert ecommerce advice, Shopify insights and optimisation tips.css-vykmad{color:var(--chakra-colors-brand-500);}.

Expert ecommerce advice, Shopify insights and optimisation tips.