Lowe's debuts 'view in your space' AR experience

Consumers no longer have to guess or try to visualize how a new home or yard purchase from Lowe’s will look once unpacked thanks to a new artificial reality feature in the retailer’s app.

That’s if they have an Android smartphone and the Lowe’s app. The retailer’s new “view in your space” experience, available on Android devices with ARCore, debuted this month just in time for Lowe’s big spring sales season.

The goal is to help shoppers make a faster buying decision as Lowe’s research reveals consumers often take weeks when considering big-ticket items such as patio furniture and grill setups.

Oftentimes that lag in purchase is due to ensuring the potential product will fit and look appropriate in the home or yard space.

The AR capability eliminates any concern about how the items will look once in place as it lets consumers embed products into a scanned image of the space.

The new AR effort comes just on the heels of another Lowe’s innovation, an app called “measured by Lowe’s” that enables customers to take, save and send measurements for home repair work. The app turns an augmented reality-enabled iPhone or iPad into a digital tape measure that can calculate, align, layer and filter measurements — and even share them on social media.

Both app innovations are part of a continuing quest by Lowe’s to differentiate in the home improvement retail sector and to boost the customer experience. As Retail Customer Experience reported, Lowe’s believes the customer experience strategy should be focused on improving things that people don’t even know they want improved.

The product-in-place AR experience

With the new view in your space feature, a Lowe’s app user taps on the option while browsing products on the retailer’s website. The customer can then scan, via the device camera, a potential product location and then drag and drop a product into the desired spot.

Shoppers can even ‘walk’ closer to the product or walk ‘around’ it to get a look at how the item looks from different vantage points.

If all looks good consumers just need to click an icon in the lower right-hand corner to move it into their online cart.

Lowe’s, in an announcement on the feature, stated visualization barriers, and a lack of design help, culminated in the “stalling out” of more than $70 billion in home improvement projects.

“With the addition of view in your space to Lowe’s arsenal of virtual and augmented reality power tools, Lowe’s is helping customers break through barriers and get their projects to completion,” Lowe’s stated in the announcement.

https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/articles/lowes-debuts-view-in-your-space-ar-experience/