Whether innovative technology succeeds or not depends heavily on its contribution to business value. Augmented reality has been demonstrating this across fashion, grocery, beauty, and other retail verticals for years. Those that aren’t following that trend are falling behind.
Customers are moving beyond the early days of seeing AR as a party trick and are setting higher expectations. Retailers are also now expecting AR implementations in their choice of SaaS platforms for omnichannel commerce. Now is a critical moment for retail brands to make investments in AR features for their customers.
Key Drivers Making AR a Retail Priority
Augmented reality in retail is in demand by consumers. This can be understood through four key drivers:
- Consumer behaviour shifts: contactless, digital, and self-checkout shopping experiences are in demand from consumers.
- Mobile-first journeys: smartphones are an exceedingly popular top-of-funnel platform. Coincidentally, mobile is the best platform to implement AR features.
- High return rates: when customers don’t understand the size, fit, and other characteristics of what they’re buying online, return rates surge. Boohoo implemented virtual try-on technology, allowing customers to visualize clothing items on themselves. This innovation led to a 20% reduction in return rates, enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing logistical costs.
- Demand for personalisation: AR and smart recommendations empower shoppers with better tools to find items in the right size and fit for them.
What Retailers and Retail SaaS Platforms Gain by Investing in AR Now
At the 2025 Retail Technology Show in London, a hot topic for retailers was how omnichannel experiences can go beyond a brand’s online channels. For customers who shop both in-store and online, there is an opportunity here for brands to make their experience seamless and personalized.
As an example, a customer may spend time at home virtually trying on clothes with their smartphone. Once they enter the geofence range of a brick-and-mortar store, the customer receives a push notification from the application. This notification informs the customer that items they virtually tried on at home are available at the store they’re visiting.
Why AR is Critical for Retailers
Geofencing in retail bridges the gap between in-store and online experiences by personalizing messages to customers. Timely push notifications ensure a boost in conversions, and the increased customer satisfaction leads to greater retention and upsell opportunities for the business.
Additionally, implementations like these are more efficient for businesses. Those personalized notifications can be completely automated. If mobile apps offer features like in-store navigation, it makes it less likely for staff to need to help customers find their way to a product.
Most importantly, the data generated from solutions like these has strategic value. Understanding behavioral data from customers can inform your brand’s planning and product development.
Why It Matters for Retail SaaS Providers
Retail businesses are searching for SaaS providers who can provide immersive and hybrid funnels for their customers. Every AR capability is different, which will differentiate your platform from competitors and future-proof your value proposition.
There is also a great deal of opportunity in white-labelling AR features, APIs, and platform integrations. Going this route can increase opportunities for business growth for retail SaaS platforms.
What Happens if You Wait with AR Implementation
Naturally, businesses meet innovative technologies with scepticism. However, augmented reality has been around for years. It’s no longer new. Retail brands that haven’t invested in advanced retail software development services are falling behind in delivering immersive shopping experiences.
If e-commerce platforms aren’t meeting customer expectations, their loyalties will begin to shift toward more advanced brands. Most critically, meeting those demands can take time. Starting later in the game to develop an AR strategy means more lost customers.
Charting a Course for AR in Retail
There are plenty of valid reasons to resist the urge to jump onto innovation hype cycles as they appear. However, it’s understandably challenging to incorporate those technologies into your business. Despite those challenges, there are ways to incorporate those solutions into your retail brand and achieve a return on investment.
Where Would AR Make the Biggest Impact?
Mindlessly jumping headfirst into the arena isn’t the best approach. You need to know exactly how augmented reality will be effective for your retail customers or SaaS platform subscribers. This entirely depends on your business model, so there is no one right answer.
Some examples that many businesses incorporate for retail applications are virtual try-on, product visualisation, interactive in-store experiences, and custom packaging experiences. In B2B settings, you might consider solutions like AR-powered sales presentations, shopfloor planning, and training.
Who Are You Trying to Reach?
This question is excellent for deciding what features to implement and for what platforms. If you’re dealing with a mobile-savvy audience, they’ll be much more receptive to virtual try-on applications. More importantly though, is understanding if your customers are more likely to shop online or in-store, or a mix of both.
You should also understand if you’d like to start encouraging customers to visit in-store locations more often. That can help you develop omnichannel strategies that incorporate AR features.
Choose Technologies Wisely
There are two main options to choose from to implement AR technologies for retail applications. They are:
- WebAR: with no installation needed, web-based AR leverages a user’s web browser for the entire experience. These features are convenient and accessible for many people on all platforms but are inherently limited in their capabilities.
- Native Mobile: developers use frameworks like ARCore for Android or ARKit for iOS to develop native mobile AR apps. These are much more powerful but require dedicated development for each platform.
- Cross-Platform Mobile: these frameworks make it easier to develop a single application that works across Android and iOS devices, but they come at the cost of limited capabilities and performance.
There is no one right way to approach AR for retail. Your decision will depend heavily on your brand’s unique needs and resources. However, with Statista reporting over 1.67 billion mobile AR users in 2025, mobile AR is an essential focus for all retail brands.
Developing AR Features
Another crucial challenge for retail brands is deciding on how they’re going to build AR features. In-house development teams can be difficult and expensive to cultivate. Outsourcing to retail software development companies is a popular option. This is often because consultants who offer those services have a wide range of experience helping other similar businesses achieve their goals.
Crossing the Bridge
Augmented reality in retail has evolved. It’s no longer a novel and experimental technology, but instead an expectation from consumers for the e-commerce experience. Businesses that fail to implement AR in their applications are going to fall behind and lose loyal customers to their competitors. The time to cross that bridge is now — before you get left behind.
