New Tech to Size Up Mobile Buyers
In the online clothing market, currently valued at over $72 billion in the U.S. alone, product returns are a huge source of profit losses. Some 70 percent of apparel returns are size related, and over 32 percent of shoppers report that they don’t purchase fashion items online because of uncertainty around size and fit. Now, a company known as MySize, a creator and offering of smartphone measurement applications, is providing online retailers a new turnkey technology designed to make sure buyers get the right size when they order online.
MySize has developed an enhanced version of their MySizeID measurement technology that retailers can integrate into their online stores, and directly into their website’s e-commerce platform. This new app can enable clients to mitigate the high cost of size-based returns, by giving Internet retailers a more accurate and efficient sizing solution.
MySizeID app can help online buyers choose the appropriate apparel size for specific brands, based on the shopper’s actual measurements. The app enables consumers to measure themselves just once using their smartphone, and then it automatically matches them with any brand-specific apparel item in their size. After integrating the app into their e-commerce platform, storeowners can provide their shoppers with the right sized merchandise the first time.
Smart AR Mirrors Enable Virtual Fitting Rooms
According to the latest report from MarketsandMarkets, the augmented reality (AR) retail market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of some 47 percent between 2018 and 2023. Much of that growth is being attributed to the steady increase of online shopping, which has encouraged retailers to adopt AR as an effective sales tool.
Smart AR mirrors are currently leading the augmented reality retail market growth, thanks to their expanding applications, such as virtual try-on solutions for apparel fittings and cosmetics. Virtual dressing rooms are being adopted by a growing number of fashion retailers as a way for their customers to see how the merchandise they are considering would look on them in person.
AR applications in advertising and marketing have been shown to increase customer engagement, and garnering increased revenue continues to be the major objective of using AR for sales. Beyond its application in the world of fashion retail, AR is expected to expand across most retail sectors, including grocery sales, as more markets make their inventory available for delivery online.
Engaging Mobile Customers
As mobile sales platforms continue to evolve, retailers are gaining access to tools that enable them to engage with buyers on their mobile devices anywhere and at any time. Diebold Nixdorf, a world leader in connected commerce solutions, recently announced a strategic alliance with ACTV8me, a provider of multi-screen applications. By integrating ACTV8me’s platform into Diebold Nixdorf’s Vynamic Retail software solutions suite, Nixdorf can now offer retail clients a way to engage with their customers anywhere and at any time.
The new enhanced solution, called Vynamic Demand, allows retail venues to connect with buyers across all digital touchpoints. This makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of marketing dollars across those touchpoints and then optimize promotional campaigns based on real-time actionable insights. Vynamic Demand can manage all aspects of sales and inventory, and the solution can even transfer the offers currently running on television campaigns to mobile devices, enabling buyers to instantly purchase the products they’ve seen on TV.
Vynamic Demand can also send special offers to the mobile phones of consumers identified via geo-fencing as being in the vicinity of a particular store, so they can be directed to that store in a targeted manner. Not only does the solution enable retailers to engage with their buyers across all touchpoints, but every engagement has been personalized to add value to each particular consumer.
With these new features Vynamic Demand can also provide retailers with powerful real-time analytics that can measure current sales returns to reveal the effectiveness of every marketing dollar being spent. The ACTV8 integration platform is tailored to accomplish the transfer of contextually targeted, personalized advertising content from any media source to a user’s mobile device. This provides a transactional sales layer to advertisements and programming across TV, radio, live events, and retail. Their platform has already been embraced by several media giants, including NBC, FOX, and ESPN.