## 1 Introduction  
Emerging technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), are contributing to the further evolution of e-commerce [1]. They offer considerable advantages, such as the ability to provide a shopping experience that resembles face-to-face shopping and the opportunity to present products that are highly personalised to the customer's profile [2, 3, 4]. However, the adoption of these technologies requires considerable investment in skilled staff and state-of-the-art technological resources [5]. While large international companies have these resources at their disposal, marking the next evolutionary steps, small businesses are generally at a disadvantage in terms of competitiveness. This dynamic is leading to a growing gap between the e-commerce giants and small businesses, further widening existing inequalities. Faced with these challenges, there is a need to look for solutions that reduce this gap, improve the competitiveness of small businesses and strengthen local economies. To improve this competitiveness, it is necessary to help small businesses go digital with technologies that will shape the commercial situation in the years to come. Due to the changes in consumption patterns in recent years, it is critical to provide these small businesses with technological solutions that abstract them from the difficulties of implementation and management, while enabling interaction with potential buyers. All of this with the aim of not being continually in a notable technological gap. Therefore, a first step must be overcome: the digitisation of the products to be displayed in the virtual environment. Studies show that the realistic appearance of these products contributes significantly to a higher purchase intention [3,4]. Unfortunately, product scanning requires high-cost devices for high-quality results, such as advanced 3D scanners, which are often beyond the economic reach of retailers and require technical know-how to operate. Without the possibility of acquiring these scanners, software is needed to facilitate this task and integrate the products into e-commerce platforms. Therefore, it is necessary to consider low-cost and user-friendly digitisation methods that enable realistic digitisation of products. In recent times, state-of-the-art hardware and software technologies have emerged which, combined with AI techniques, can improve the results [6]. To the best of our knowledge, these technologies have not yet been analysed and evaluated in depth within the context of VR shopping. The aim of this work is to analyse and experiment with technologies that enable small retailers to digitise their product catalogues at low cost. The results of this work will be used to establish guidelines for the low-cost scanning technologies that we are investigating in this work and that will be available to such retailers. In addition to realism, it is essential to ensure that digitised products are integrated into a virtual environment without negatively affecting their performance. Too much detail, or the simultaneous display of a large number of products, can compromise the performance of the system, leading to dizziness [7], uncomfortable usage of VR glasses and, in general, a poor User Experience (UX). Therefore, this work includes a study that seeks a balance between realism and performance to ensure customer well-being and future effectiveness in product sales. The results provide guidelines for the design of optimal VR experiences for e-commerce. Our approach is therefore based on two fundamental aspects: (i) to quantitatively study the visual quality of 3D models generated by different low-cost scanning tools and (ii) to analyse the performance offered by those models that ensure higher visual quality in order to determine the workload that current VR headsets on the market can support while providing a pleasant user experience.