As an AD atAgence KNR, I often have to deal with customers who want to set up an e-commerce site, but are afraid of spending a fortune on photo shoots to image their products.
No, we’re going to prove to you in 5 points that you can get quality images of your products, at a lower cost… When 3D modeling merges with e-commerce, you get 3D eCommerce.

In my opinion, giving depth to a website increases the user’s interaction with it: by default, the eye is drawn to volume.

So, here are 5 advantages of 3D in a website, illustrated by an example made in KNR, La Capricieuse.

Why do you need 3D for an e-Commerce site?

For many things, but in most cases to illustrate a product. So we’re in the e-commerce business. However, it can also be used for something else. more abstract, such as creating a portfolio.

Less organization. More simplicity.

When we want to sell a product online, we have 3 options:

• The Packshot
• Retrieve images from a product already online (bad!)
• 3D (yay!!)

Customers generally opt for packshot for simplicity’s sake (they say). But contrary to popular belief, creating 3D images can be much simpler than organizing a packshot. To prove it, here’s what a packshot looks like:

• Organization (product reception or customer visit)
• Inventory of products to be shot
• Mobilization of equipment / Equipment rental
• Find / Rent shooting location
• Image selection
• Image processing (retouching)
• Image cropping
• Not to mention the staff mobilized…

For many situations, producing the product in 3D will considerably reduce the lead time for the customer, and relieve you of a Dantesque organizational burden:

• Receipt (by e-mail) of product measurements
• Modeling
• Texturing
• Export

So there’s no need to travel, no product reception, just sit back and enjoy bringing the product to life.

Here’s a concrete example:
We recently designed the website for the alcohol brand “La Capricieuse”. Obviously, the products had to appear on the site, but the customer didn’t have any available to send us. If he had, it would have taken 1 week to receive the product, and, counting all the organization, it would have taken us 10 days to finalize the packshot and integrate it on the site. So we decided to make the bottles in 3D: 3 days of production were enough, so we saved 7 days (and the customer saved money).

Very few constraints.

Another advantage of 3D is its freedom. In fact, during a shooting day, you need to plan all the product’s poses for future use. This requires considerable planning and execution, and there’s no guarantee that the installation will be used!

If you make your product in 3D, you can turn it, flip it, re-turn it, re-re- … You know what I mean. What’s more (and this is the icing on the cake), you can create compositions using several of the customer’s products. No more worries about forecasting: do only what’s necessary. Nice, isn’t it?

Updating your visuals also becomes child’s play: if a color or label changes, all you need to do is update your 3D file with the new visual, without having to organize a second packshot: saving time and money!

Time and quality savings.

Just imagine: no more clipping! Hallelujah, you might say… Sf you are normally constituted, of course. That’s right, if we go back to this article it’s all about improving the experience of your website: so a clipped product is a product we can use in any context.

By creating your product in 3D, you avoid the need to re-route it. This opens up new possibilities, especially when we work with materials like glass, which treat light differently.

For example: You put your product on a black background (the black background is in CSS code), then your customer tells you that he’d actually like a pink background (why not after all): no retouching or editing necessary, just change the CSS.

From HD to infinity.

The 3D principle is based on the calculation of 3-dimensional curves (the bezier), like our friend Illustrator, so the object has no “real” size (by which I mean it can be infinitely large or small). With this in mind, you can output your renderings at the desired size and resolution. Handy if you want to cover the Louvre with your product! More concretely, this allows you to export your product in the required dimensions – a dedication to our Apple-worshipping friends who swear by retina.

Multiply supports and variations

To conclude with all these advantages, don’t forget that this 3D model can be used for any purpose: promotional video, paper versions, and even 3D printing (well, why not?).

With these advantages, for us using 3D is no longer an option! We make websites more attractive and navigation less neutral and redundant. The user can better project himself through the product, which encourages purchase.

In addition to the UX aspect, it also saves time and money for the customer, a criterion that makes all the difference. (And between you and me, it’s really cool to do 3D).

Conclusion

I can already feel you squirming in your seat, but there’s more to 3D on the web than that. Thanks to the geniuses of this world, code is evolving, enabling us today to work with 3D files exported from software to make the experience even more immersive!

Manage product position according to scroll; Order rotation during hover…

With this system, you can bring innovation to your site, develop new effects never seen before,.give a new dimension to your product by putting it in the spotlight: your product is the center of attention.

But we’ll come back to this in a future article dedicated to…
WebGL and Interactive 3D
!

I hope you’ll find this article useful, and please feel free to list in the comments sites that make excellent use of 3D to embellish their e-commerce sites. Perhaps we’ll do a comparative article on the best sites using 3D ecommerce.

If you’d like some advice, or if you’d like to use this technique for your project or your customer, don’t hesitate to leave me a message in the comments! I read them all and respond to them (not like Gabriel Kaam, that bad guy).

On that note, thank you and see you next time!