The Power of Product Visualization in the E-Commerce Era

By: LiquidPixels | May 10, 2022 | 8 Min Read

Product visualization is crucial to both the customer experience and to a company’s ROI.

Human brains can identify images in 13 milliseconds. In fact, there is a 65 percent higher chance for the human brain to recall information from images rather than texts. This is why high-quality images are mission critical to any business that sells their products online.

Research also found that ​​30 percent of respondents in the U.S., France, Germany, and Great Britain will not purchase from an online store if product images are missing or of low quality. Therefore, product visualization is crucial to both the customer experience and to a company’s ROI.

Through online visualization, e-commerce businesses can go beyond static 2D images, and instead provide interactive high-quality images that showcase lifelike representations of a product.

This is important because accurate product images lead to customer satisfaction. Poor quality images that over-promise and under-deliver lead to dissatisfaction. According to a survey, at least 30 percent of products ordered online are returned. Of this number, 22 percent said the top reason for returning an item was because the product received looked different from the photos presented online. This is also part of the reason why 83 percent of consumers believe retailers have to provide more authentic shopping experiences.

So, what is product visualization, and how can it benefit e-commerce companies?

Visualization is a Dynamic Medium 

Product visualization is a form of imagery that combines the utilization of high-quality digital photos and software tools to produce a realistic visual of an existing product. In some instances, visualization also employs 3D technologies to render a 360-degree view of a product, or a lifelike image of a custom-made item.

So how exactly does visualization work? Here are some of the features that e-commerce companies can leverage through product visualization solutions:

Present Products Up Close

Zoom-and-pan and magnify functions are image visualization features that showcase the elaborate characteristics—texture, pattern, embroidery, etc.—of a product.

For example, jewelers can present the intricate details of stones or gems in their collections. Meanwhile, a furniture business may also benefit from the use of visualization by allowing customers to have a closer look of the texture and design of a couch or an armoire. Through product visualization, these can be presented in high-definition without impacting website load times.

Above: Example of LiquiFire® Viewer Suite™, Zoom Viewer™.

Provide 360-Degree Views

E-Commerce businesses can also enable 360-degree and motion-enabled product views through image visualization.

For example, since not every couch is placed against a wall, a furniture maker can provide website visitors with a 360-degree view of a couch. Imagine showing a customer the intentional design and details of the back of a couch before it arrives in their living room. Similarly, a car maker can showcase moving parts and sections of the vehicle, like doors and compartments opening or closing. In these scenarios, the use of visualization expands a consumer’s experience with the product even before they buy it.

Above: Example of LiquiFire Viewer Suite, Motion Viewer™

Integrating 3D images into visualization tools means online shoppers will no longer be limited to a mere static, frontal view of a product. It even paves the way for customers’ better understanding of a product’s functions and features.

In fact, using 3D images helps e-commerce companies attract more customers. According to research, integrating 3D virtual reality images into e-commerce sites can make the current online shopping experience “more informative and playful.” Research also notes that the informativeness provided by e-commerce sites is a critical factor in shaping a shopper’s intent to purchase a given product.

Some companies that have delved into e-commerce have already reaped the benefits of product visualization. Home Depot, for example, saw a decrease in its product returns by 35 percent after adding 360-degree views on products listed on its e-commerce site.

Showcase a Collection of Products

One of the best ways to show a multitude of products on one web page is to create an image portfolio. However, collating photos can be challenging, especially when it involves putting together images of varying sizes, quality, and orientation.

Online visualization can help: automated product collections allow brands to display their product lines with the same visual quality. Visualization software technologies also enable e-commerce sites to present their array of products on one page without worrying about low quality images or a slow-loading web page.

Right: Example of LiquiFire Viewer Suite, Collection Viewer™

The Demand for Product Customizations

In addition to answering customer demands for product accuracy, visualization can also help with integrating real-time product customizations on e-commerce platforms. The use of visualization in product customizations lets customers interact with 3D images of products and “try” different variations of a product in real-time.

“The use of visualization is only going to increase, both in the online visualization of products that do not yet physically exist, such as customization (allowing people to explore limitless visual combinations); and, in UX, where increasingly more items will become virtual.”
—Steve Kristy. CEO, LiquidPixels

Popular furniture business IKEA is one of the companies that received a boost from integrating 3D customizations in its online stores.

IKEA introduced IKEA Place in 2017, an app that allowed customers to try products in different styles and colors in real-life scenarios. This led to a significant boost to IKEA’s online business. By fiscal year 2018, it saw an e-commerce sales growth of 31 percent. And come fiscal year 2021, even when a large number of its stores were forced to close during the pandemic, it saw a 5.8 percent increase in overall revenues, which was led by its online sales.

An increasing number of industries are joining the customization movement. Apparel and jewelry now use digital customizations to bring exceptional online shopping experiences to their customers.

Threadless, a Chicago-based t-shirt business, is one such company which leveraged product visualization to generate 3D models of their products, to showcase their highly-customized product catalog, and to popularize their network of artists.

“LiquidPixels has helped us easily generate hundreds of thousands of highly complicated, lifelike preview images on the fly from our artist community’s graphics. The draping functionality is invaluable to show artists and their customers what graphics will look like printed on a three dimensional product.”
—Jake Nickell, Founder & CEO, Threadless

However, not all businesses have realized the importance of visual content for their e-commerce strategy. In fact, according to a benchmark report, in 2021, 58.1 percent of product images online still use the basic JPG file type. This can be attributed to JPG having a smaller file size, which helps reduce load time for web pages.

For other industries, such as furniture retail, only 17 percent of the top 100 U.S. furniture retailers use 360-degree product views on their website, proving that more e-commerce companies are missing the opportunity to provide an interactive shopping experience for their customers.

Captivating Images Through LiquiFire Viewer Suite

Aimed at helping to close the gap between in-store and online shopping, our LiquiFire® Viewer Suite™ provides clients these various types of product visualization tools.

E-Commerce platforms can now give customers an online product exploration experience that virtually recreates seeing the product in person. LiquiFire Viewer Suite allows e-commerce businesses to deliver crisp, interactive images; this counteracts the lack of an up-close experience in typical online shopping.

LiquiFire Viewer Suite also delivers these optimized images on any device or browser on demand to ensure that networking speeds do not compromise product photos’ quality and end-users’ web experience.

“A single master image can instantly create imagery in any variation in response to a user’s choices, allowing customers to visualize not only a product in its available colors or patterns, but to visualize product combinations, much like the serendipitous shopping behavior of the brick-and-mortar world.”
—Steve Kristy, CEO, LiquidPixels

Here are more details on the powerful capabilities of LiquiFire Viewer Suite:

• LiquiFire Magnify Viewer™ provides the finest details of any product by simply hovering on the image. It presents a high-resolution view of a product, which is optimized for the end-user’s device. E-Commerce businesses looking to utilize LiquiFire Magnify Viewer can choose from three viewing modes, depending on which best suits their product catalog.
• LiquiFire Zoom Viewer™ allows businesses’ online customers to focus on a specific section of a product’s image, and even pan across the image at the same zoom level. LiquiFire Zoom Viewer is tile based and uses intelligent pixel streaming, which promises high-resolution images while ensuring that photos remain optimized for minimal bandwidth.
• LiquiFire Motion Viewer™ lets online shoppers access a product image and see it in a variety of fluid angles and motions. LiquiFire Motion Viewer provides a 360-degree spin of the product on all axes, as well as an auto-spin feature which can be enabled. In addition, the function also allows users to freeze the image and utilize the features of LiquiFire Zoom Viewer.
• LiquiFire Surround Viewer™ allows for the utilization of businesses’ 3D assets, and presents these images more powerfully by showing them in realistic environments, and in a 540-degree view. Through this tool, customers can customize products based on color, fabric, or other patterns, and even render these images in various viewpoints.
• LiquiFire Collection Viewer™ lets online shoppers see a selection of images or LiquiFire Image Chains™, in a slideshow or a portfolio format, with the option of displaying them individually or side-by-side, aligned vertically or horizontally. This feature intelligently resizes the selection of images, and provides an optimum view of product images regardless of the end-user’s device or screen size.
• LiquiFire Collection+ Viewer™ offers all of the features of LiquiFire Collection Viewer, plus access to all of the other LiquiFire Viewer Suite offerings.

If you would like to learn more about harnessing the power of product visualization, please contact us.