‘web AR’ is not just exciting, it is practical for business in new decade
By: Marvin Ai
Tags: Strategy, Business, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Future Technology

Augmented reality might seem like a daunting new frontier for the average business, but adopting this new technology is a lot easier than it seems. With an anticipated 3.8 billion smartphone users in 2021, more people are using mobile tech to experience the world, from enhanced museum tours to Animoji. If you haven’t already considered it, AR can be a smart, practical form of smart marketing and branding.

First, it’s important to distinguish between augmented reality and virtual reality. Virtual reality is an almost wholly-digital experience that requires special hardware to immerse yourself in a new environment. Augmented reality is a combination of the digital and physical worlds, where the former is often “layered” over the latter. If you’ve used custom Snapchat filters or played Pokemon Go, you’ve already tried AR without even realizing it.

But the great thing about AR is that it doesn’t require buying new hardware. Virtual reality, while still an exciting new realm, isn’t as widely accessible as AR. For starters, you need pricey new gadgets to play around in VR, but anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can tap into a well-crafted AR experience.

“The biggest benefit of AR is the simplicity. It enables users to experience the 3d digital content on top of a known world viewed by camera. Web based Augmented Reality is bit more special because even it does not need a special app in the first place.” says Swapratim Roy, the CTO of Marvin AI. AR has, for instance, become a huge part of our daily reality, with Zoom virtual backgrounds helping people continue to meet and work collaboratively regardless of their environment.

Speaking to Swapratim and Marvin AI’s CEO Ajanta Das Roy reveals that augmented reality is a particularly effective, forward-thinking strategy for companies in retail, museums/education, and home improvement; AR works best to convey important, relevant information to customers in a quick, intuitive way. Best of all, it’s surprisingly straightforward to implement, especially if you’re working with an experienced content management team.

Web based Augmented Reality from Marvin AI

Making AR experiences useful for your customers

When accessing information on mobile, people are often seeking the quickest path to the most concise answer. And as Swapratim points out, AR truly shines in industries where consumers seek practical information. “The benefit that you get from AR is that you can digest a lot of information in an interactive mode with a very sharp timeline.” he explains. In 2020, blogs and websites are no longer the main avenues of brand communication — modern customer experiences can include everything from chatbots and webAR to new types of streaming media.

Marvin AI team has launched a cloud platform where creating AR experience for business would be really simple and smart. Even a minimum viable product can be created in less than 4 weeks — easily accessible by anyone across the globe without any special apps or hololens.

The team explained that AR for customer experience works best when it is designed to work in specific way. For example, web AR takes effect whenever the intelligent web based application camera tracks a marker. “AR-Marker is like a new barcode. Users can simply focus their camera to a marker — which could be present in website or printed in a magazine — and the AR comes into reality” — says Ajanta. It is a perfect way for the brands to control how and when their AR show will be displayed to the customers with a proper context around.

“Customers deserve to have more engaging experience in digital world than just viewing plain old 2d contents — which is not bad but it is just the same way of using 2d pictures, since the first photograph was taken 194 years back” explains Swapratim, “instead of having to step out of your reality and put yourself into a whole new one. I think it’s much more applicable for certain industries where you don’t want an entertaining experience, you need a useful one.”