Saatchi Art lets customers view over 1 million works of art in their home using WebAR

WebAR Case Study

Project Overview

World leading online art gallery Saatchi Art integrated a web-based augmented reality feature on its website called ‘View in My Room’ which enables over 1 million works of art to be viewed virtually in a shopper's room. Developed by AR design firm Rock Paper Reality, ‘View in a Room’ is one of the largest Web AR deployments to date for an ecommerce site.

The ‘View in My Room’ augmented reality feature allows art buyers to select artworks on SaatchiArt.com and instantly see them on their own walls using their smartphone or tablet, all with no app required. This is important because according to a survey by Saatchi Art, 70% of art buyers are hesitant to purchase because they can't see the artwork in advance. As a result, this feature has successfully helped art buyers with their buying decisions online with an average 17% increase in spending.

Increase in spend

More likely to purchase

Viewable products in WebAR

We are super proud that Saatchi Art—the world's largest distributor of online art—picked RPR to develop one of the largest deployments of WebAR on 8th Wall's best-in-class platform. With over 1 million pieces of art available to view across the globe, the View-In-My-Room experience improved buyer confidence, drove sales conversions, and increased loyalty to the Saatchi Art brand.

Patrick Johnson, CEO and Founder of Rock Paper Reality

The Experience

This first-of-its-kind production grade deployment was designed and architected for scalability across the entire site — each art piece is dynamically scaled based on the artwork’s metadata and deployed into AR on a 3D canvas with the approximate real-world dimensions of the physical artwork. It also includes a proximity indicator, which analyses the user’s position in the 3D scene and warns users when they are getting too close to the wall. As walls are often markerless, the proximity indicator was developed to improve the performance when tracking art.

This resulted in a seamless WebAR experience where users can now easily visualize and purchase artwork in their home to ensure it is just right before purchasing. To do this, users select the art they are interested in online and are presented with a “View in My Room” icon. After tapping the “View in My Room” icon, users can virtually place the art on their wall using augmented reality. Users can then take a photo of the art in their home or tap to add the art to their cart to purchase

Results

Consumers who purchased on SaatchiArt.com and used the View in My Room WebAR feature spent on average ~17% more than those that purchased without the use of WebAR. Consumers who used the View in My Room feature were 4X more likely to convert than those that did not use the AR feature.

About the Agency

Rock Paper Reality (RPR) is a veteran Augmented Reality agency that helps companies from startup to Fortune 500s develop best-in-class AR content and strategies proven to drive brand awareness, customer engagement, and revenue growth.