Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have become the most popular and essential components of the digital ecosystem. These two trendsetting technologies have a computer-generated depiction of the real and artificial world. They help businesses specifically app development companies to try relentless experiments and craft excellent mobile applications that are aligned with the digital trends and yields the best results for their startups or existing businesses.
As the market is overwhelmed with various mobile apps, the USP of your application profoundly decides its notoriety among the clients. AR and VR are among those technologies that can grab some eye-balls and make your application unique in your niche.
Let us start with understanding the two technologies in brief.
What is Augmented Reality?
AR not only makes your mobile applications unique and innovative but also gives your customers an exciting and time-saving experience. Tech industry leaders like Microsoft, Apple, and Google recognize AR as a promising technology that is constantly generating profits with time.
AR marks a green tick to bring power and surprise all wrapped to a customer’s fingertips in an outwardly luring and personalized bundle. Let us understand the app development- both the AR way and the non- AR way.
Suppose, you’re an owner of eCommerce startup and you want to create an eCommerce website for your products the non-AR way, you will go for the app features like product carts, order tracking, order analysis, delivery status, and more. Your customers will visit your eCommerce website, find their choice of products and make a purchase.
Now, the purchase is not the victory part. The customer can return the product and ask to initiate a refund which is absolutely fine and usual.
Here is when AR comes to the picture!
Now, if you develop an eCommerce application, the “AR way”, your customers will have an option to virtually try their selected items which will help them make a uniform decision and save both your and your customer’s time.
Amazing, right?
AR is not just limited to eCommerce mobile app development with apparel trying options, but it can be used for various other types of applications such as healthcare, gaming, real estate, or maybe tile selection for your home.
Famous applications that are leveraging AR and rocking the digital world are Snapchat, Sephora, Lens kart, Gatwick, Amikasa, Quiver, Marxent Labs, etc.
What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual Reality creates simulations similar to the real world and “submerge” the watcher utilizing computers and tactile gadgets like headsets and gloves. Virtual Reality can take you to any place, helping you gather information about different places by encountering them as an event that you were really there. It is used in 3d movies and short films that you go to see in malls.
VR is not only limited to entertainment, it is widely used for training, education, and science, and treating post-traumatic stress.
Developing a mobile application with virtual reality helps businesses conduct conferences at one conference table or make direct communication with their client and customers.
Suppose you are a professor and your students want to go to a jungle to see a lion. It’s not something the school will allow or even the student’s parents. The one easy and creative way to make them feel and believe that they are visiting a jungle is through VR.
With VR institutions take their students on field trips and make them aware of places and things that are inaccessible to them in the real world.
Ah! How lucky are we with VR?
Did you know?
75% of the biggest companies have running VR projects.
Some famous examples of VR marketing are- McDonald’s, Thomas Cook, Holoroom, Oculus Rift, etc.
Difference between AR and VR
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (AR) create a bridge between the fictional and actual world. While AR helps your devices with everyday activities like searching for information, games, and shopping, VR takes you to a fictional world that has no links with the real world- say to a planet far away from Earth. AR and VR are mostly blended together to generate an engaging experience to transport the user to the fictitious world by giving a new dimension of interaction between a real and virtual world
Some key differences can be seen as-
- AR expands the real-world scene whereas VR makes totally immersive virtual situations.
- In AR, no headset is required on the other hand in VR, you need to have a headset device and sometimes gloves too.
- Only 25% of AR is virtual whereas VR has 75% virtuality and 25% reality.
- AR keeps the users in the loop with the real world but VR totally isolates the users by taking them to a fictional world.
Importance of Augmented and Virtual Reality for Building Top Business Mobile Apps
The virtual world is coming in contact with businesses with assistance to functionality and voiceovers. No doubt, various mobile app development companies are integrating AR and VR with their mobile applications for delivering successful mobile applications.
Let us have a look at the advantages and benefits AR and VR are providing to businesses all over the world.
1. Improved Learning Experience
Learning apps are in a race to create the best learning experience for their students. The education sector is leveraging AR and VR to organize virtual trips for students and providing them training in a safe yet competitive space that helps them explore things and places. Business sectors are leveraging AR and VR by conducting virtual conferences for clear presentations and a better understanding of the projects.
Virtual reality apps make language learning preparations exceptionally simple. Numerous VR apps can offer assistance in expanding the language learning aptitudes of individuals. The best and versatile app developers can take this information of VR to an entirely modern height. AR and VR-enabled apps not only give an interactive learning experience to their users but also provide an opportunity to implement things in real-time as you learn.
2. Increased business performance
These trendy technologies offer the best customer connection and engagement solutions. These technologies are diverse enough to handle B2B and B2C, whether it is real-time monitoring of factory equipment, service delivery, navigation, or product presentations.
As AR and VR are becoming easier to deploy with time, businesses are getting advanced opportunities to tip the profit scales to their sides. Automobile industries are using it for designing and visualizing the car’s different features before actually committing to building a model, beauty brands like MAC are using these technologies to overlay different makeup styles and looks onto the customer’s face and what not.
No matter what business industry you belong to, AR and VR can help your business grow exponentially with their cool features and exciting user experience offerings.
3. Matchless Interactive Reality
Most people now prefer online services and products than visiting the store or offices offline. Whether it is a flight ticket booking or shopping for a new dress, online platforms have now become the go-to options for everyone because of the convenience factor.
AR and VR fit into the online picture perfectly by expanding the overall features of the online web store. Most eCommerce applications incorporate AR in them to provide their user’s the ease of trying and avoiding all the time and energy wasted in the return procedures. Giving a 360-degree overview, these apps make shopping involvement much simpler.
They guarantee the fulfillment of the clients as well. In case businesses execute VR and AR in their mobile apps built, this is the key benefit that they will get.
4. Increased Consumer Engagement
For essentially any business, versatile AR and VR features offer a prime opportunity to enter the advanced digital market and deliver services that satisfy their customers. Providing the customers with real-life experiences does give a boost to the consumer engagement rates. As the users are totally immersed in the app while using it, they are able to relate and engage more with the application than they would have been if it was a normal app without any AR and VR features.
Mobile App engineers get this significance of client engagement and that’s why to make VR and AR apps that make a confident client-customer Interface.
5. Brand Fidelity Boost
AR and VR are capable of easily reaching customers and potential prospects. As the technologies offer a better interaction platform, it impacts the brand’s popularity positively. The more customers love your app, the more trust they’ll put up with your brand and its services. From the brand’s unique promotion to understanding the customer needs, AR and VR contribute hugely to an app’s success and popularity.
For instance, take an example of pokemon go. The app not only became viral within a few days of its launch but also enjoyed huge success with more than 500 million downloads because customers all around the world loved how interactive this augmented reality app was.
6. Ease of Mobility
Advanced technologies such as AR and VR are shaping the future by providing ease of mobility. These technologies are setting a shopping trend for almost every utility from clothes to chairs, cars, and housing floors. All you need is to unlock your phone, download the app and experience these advanced technologies and make uniform shopping decisions without even stepping out of the house.
Considering how hard the lockdown phase was for everybody, people with the use of VR applications could still be in touch, have face-to-face meetings, and still travel the world with friends and family from their room.
IIT Bombay organized a virtual convocation ceremony for all their students during the coronavirus pandemic. That’s the power of AR, it is unstoppable and provides exceptional benefits.
7. Time-Saving Technologies
AR and VR can save plenty of your time by providing time-saving solutions. Whether you are looking to buy a dress or a property, you can simply download an app and look out for the best-suited options for you without wasting any time.
Time is precious and everyone is working hard to manage their time schedules and advanced technologies such as AR and VR just make it super easy and convenient for people who hate wasting their time. These technologies don’t only save your time but also provide you with the best of products and services from the comfort of your home.
8. Best Opportunities Offered
AR and VR corporate application offers the best of opportunities to every consumer. AR apps offer distant medical solutions to patients by helping them to identify their symptoms to enable surgeons to peer inside a patient’s body without making large incisions. A combination of VR, gaming programs, and therapeutic imaging methods as of now offers reenactment capabilities and detailed organ maps.
VR utilizing therapeutic haptic gloves makes indeed further diagnostics quicker and more viable.
It is not only the medical sector that is benefiting from these technologies, but other sectors such as education, landscape planning industry, real estate, and retail sectors also leverage these technologies and offer the best opportunities to users.
9. Enhanced Communication & Collaboration
Communication and visualization are the two important pillars of any company project. AR successfully showcases analyzed data in the form of tables, charts, infographics and brings them to life by the perfect visual effects. VR takes data visualization to another higher step by giving people submerged experiences to study and discuss data prototypes.
AR and VR also erase the language barrier by its language translation tools which assist in fluent communication. VR allows users to attend conventions or shows remotely and introduces live experiences to those who couldn’t join otherwise
10. Advertising and Marketing
Creative use of AR can improve consumer relationships while increasing the propensity to buy products. New and fresh AR events provide an opportunity to impress consumers and rivals who don’t do something like that yet.
Companies leverage AR and VR to enhance their promotional products and services. Applications developed with these technologies don’t even need any heavy marketing strategies as the experience they provide to its users speaks for itself. In short, AR and VR applications can be advertised and marketed easily with their USP being their core technologies.
Final Thoughts
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are two trendy technologies that are revolutionizing the digital era. With so many benefits mentioned above, these technologies are already widely used and will be used in the future too because these are powerful and unstoppable technologies that provide ease and convenience with a thrilling and exciting experience to all its users.
About the Author
Sidharth Jain, Proud founder of Graffersid, Web and Mobile App Development Company based in India. Graffersid has a team of designers and dedicated remote developers, Trusted by startups in YC, Harvard, Google Incubation, BluChilli. He understands how to solve problems using technology and contributes his knowledge to the leading blogging sites.
