Shopify Virtual Fitting Room Plugin | Growing Your Ecommerce Fashion Business

Fashion | Ecommerce

20.05.2022

E-commerce is becoming an extremely competitive industry that is dealing with increasingly high customer expectations when it comes to the online shopping experience. As fashion brands are trying to live up to these expectations, they are on the look-out for an all-around solution that can help them achieve better personalisation and gamification of their customer experience on Shopify.

Poor UX, basic website structure and unsophisticated product recommendations simply wouldn’t work anymore for highly demanding and digitally savvy consumers. Facing this new reality, ecommerce brands have to find solutions that can take their user experience on Shopify above and beyond the industry average.

This is where virtual fitting rooms come in useful. The ability to create an engaging virtual fitting room experience on Shopify is a tremendous advantage for ecommerce businesses. According to McKinsey, reliance on online shopping that boomed during the pandemic is likely to remain even once the pandemic is over.

“The virtual fitting room market is predicted to grow from $3 million in 2019 to $6.5 million by 2025. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 13.44% per year.” – Fashion United UK

What is a Shopify virtual fitting room plugin?

A virtual fitting room plugin for Shopify is a digital tool that replicates the in-store fitting room experience in the comfort of the shopper’s home. The technology empowers shoppers to find products with perfect sizing, fit and style without having to physically touch them or visit the store.

Otherwise known as virtual dressing rooms or virtual try-on Shopify plugins, this technology became very popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. As shoppers were unable to buy products in-store and many were concerned about trying on products physically, the virtual fitting room plugins for Shopify facilitated finding perfectly fitting clothing online.

How does the virtual fitting room plugin for Shopify work?

Today, a number of virtual fitting room plugins for Shopify exist on the market. They typically utilise artificial intelligence, computer vision and augmented reality technology.

Some plugins focus on providing a 3D fitting room experience that allows customers to combine a variety of looks and to try them on a digital mannequin with a similar body type and skin tone to their own. Although the experience helps with putting well-matched looks together, it fails to deliver on personalisation as customers don’t have the option of trying the product on themselves.

Trying to solve this problem, AR technology that renders clothing on top of the customer’s body in real time was developed. It became a sought-after experience for the younger shopper demographic and rose to popularity due to Snapchat filters and lenses.

The virtual fitting room plugin for Shopify by Texel.Moda is the only solution available on the market that provides a photorealistic and highly personalised virtual try-on & fit experience. It allows customers to try-on any product on their own photo or on a pre-loaded avatar, as well as receive a personalised fit & size recommendation.

Unlike other solutions that require users to scan themselves with a phone or install an app, Texel.Moda provides a simple user journey on a Shopify product page that delivers accurate try-on visualisation and fit recommendation within seconds.

Our solution provides everything that online shoppers expect from a virtual fitting room on Shopify: highly personalised recommendations for product size and fit, a clear visualisation of how a particular garment fits their unique bodies and the confidence to make a purchase.

The benefits of installing a Shopify virtual fitting room plugin

Virtual fitting room plugins for Shopify bring a variety of benefits to fashion brands.

“40% of shoppers would be willing to pay more for a product if they could experience it through augmented reality.” - Retail Perceptions

Lower product returns

One of the biggest problems facing fashion ecommerce today is the ever-growing number of product returns. Returns are not only bad for the business costing money and time, but they are also extremely bad for the environment.

According to RetailDive, 30% of all eCommerce product returns happen because the product size is too small, and another 22% of all returns occur because the size is too large.

Providing virtual fitting room experience on Shopify can help businesses to minimize the number of product returns caused by poor fit and sizing. It will also help to stop bracketing shopping habits, when customers order multiple product sizes to find the one that fits.

Studies confirm that virtual fitting rooms for Shopify are effective at fighting the returns epidemic, and can reduce product returns by as much as 36%. This provides businesses with larger sales margins and higher profits.

Higher conversions

Virtual dressing rooms for Shopify enable shoppers to seamlessly determine product size, fit and style, helping to make a more informed purchasing decision.

Additionally, this technology allows fashion brands to create truly diverse and inclusive Shopify fitting room experiences by providing shoppers with an opportunity to try the product on their own bodies or on models representing different skin tones and body shapes.

Multiple studies confirm that virtual fitting room plugins are effective at improving conversion rates, and can increase conversions by up to 40% for Shopify stores.

More convenient shopping experience

According to a recent study, 97% of consumers abandoned a purchase because the service wasn’t convenient enough. This data proves the fact that convenience is the backbone of ecommerce and is crucial for a positive online shopping experience.

The lack of sizing guides and the need to try on clothing physically when shopping online is a big inconvenience for the customers, resulting in low conversions.

By implementing a virtual fitting room solution for Shopify, fashion brands can overcome this industry challenge and deliver a smoother online shopping experience.

Increased loyalty and retention

Thirty nine percent of fashion brands view the “ability to turn customer data into intelligent and actionable insights” as one of the key challenges according to SAP survey.

Virtual fitting rooms for Shopify powered by AI technology help to solve this challenge by providing shoppers with smart styling solutions. This in turn, helps to increase the average order value for the fashion brands.

In addition, the technology provides companies with a variety of important insights into customer shopping habits, helping Shopify businesses to better understand their client base.

With tech-driven virtual fitting room plugins, ecommerce brands offer shoppers more control over their choices. This allows them to know exactly how the product will fit, how it will look like on them, and how it matches other items they might be thinking of buying. This translates to a more satisfying online shopping experience, leading to more sales on Shopify.

Personalising user experience on Shopify

Consumers have grown to enjoy and expect personalisation throughout their interactions with the Shopify ecommerce brands. As of today, 71% of consumers claim that they feel frustrated if their shopping experience is impersonal. As Amazon and other big players in the retail space are making personalisation an indispensable part of the shopping experience, the same is now expected from the rest of the brands. With 89% of digital businesses already investing in personalisation, the rest of the businesses have no time to waste in keeping up with the new trend.

80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalised experiences. - Epsilon

Due to increasing personalisation consumer expectations, brands must respond and adapt to this demand. If companies are able to execute their personalisation strategies well, they will not only address a popular trend, but will also thrive as a result. According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), greater personalisation increases customer spending. Consumers indicate that when a shopping experience is highly personalised, they are 110% more likely to add extra items to their shopping basket and 40% more likely to spend more than they planned.

A large-scale personalisation roll-out can also contribute to a 2%+ increase in total sales by improving customer loyalty and potentially reducing the marketing and sales spending by up to 20%.

This being said, personalisation is a strong driver for improving the bottom line on Shopify with 80% of businesses seeing an uplift since implementing personalisation.