To keep pace with the latest innovation trends in retail and ecommerce, a lot of businesses are looking into what’s hot in 2016. Last year, Augmented Reality often appeared at the top of that list, and now more and more retailers are embracing the power of AR to create a complete omnichannel experience.

In this post we’ll reveal how a major UK retailer has benefitted from integrating AR into their mobile apps, including what steps have been taken and the results observed until now.

In-Store Experience Combined With Online and Mobile

One of the main concerns retailers are facing and what has proven to be a winning tactic if successful is merging the online digital experience with the in-store experience. Stores digital integration is the step retailers need to take but many wonder what the solution is.

To tackle the challenge House of Fraser, one of the UK’s largest retail brands, introduced shoppable windows during Black Friday last year. The initiative brought amazing results as well as valuable insights into shopping patterns.

Boosting Sales During AND Before/After Opening Hours

Another constant goal retailers have is to make it easier for customers to go through the purchasing cycle and return satisfied. Higher conversion rate, engagement and retention are important but usually tricky points of the marketing strategy.

Mobile has been the next step to keep customers’ attention on the go, and now there is even more to add. In 2015, House of Fraser added Augmented Reality to its iOS app, leveraging the Layar AR SDK integrated into the app commerce platform Poq to bring actual results and build on for the future.

What did implementing AR into their app bring to the retailer? More details on the results above and some further insights into the consumer’s mind can be found in a case study we have put together with app commerce platform Poq and House of Fraser.

Contact us to learn how your business can benefit from the full power of the Layar AR SDK.

More good Layar SDK news! We’ve recently released another update to the SDK as we continue to make it as easy as possible to embed your own Augmented Reality (AR) experiences into your own iOS and Android apps.

We’ve always put an emphasis on allowing you to customize your AR experience as much as possible to fit your brand and meet the needs of your users. With the latest update you can now take more control of your AR scenes than ever before. How? Event handlers!

The introduction of event handlers means you can have actions or POI updates triggered by certain events within your scene. This enables you to add more complex functionality to your experiences, including sequencing of videos and dynamic content without the need for an external server.

Here are the new event types you can use to custom-script your AR scene…

onLoad – Triggered when the object has been loaded successfully.
onClick – Triggered when the object has been clicked (similar behaviour as the POI action).
onPlaybackStart – Triggered when the video or audio object playback has started.
onPlaybackFinish – Triggered when the video or audio object playback has finished.

All of these events can trigger new actions, content updates (including adding or removing objects from the scene) or even a custom handler that can be reused for multiple objects and on different events.

This powerful new feature allows AR scenes to be even more engaging and interactive for the user in various ways. If you’re an existing SDK user, check your inbox for links to the latest version and check out the developer documentation page for more details.

If you’re interested in using the SDK, you can try it now for free! Have questions before you start? Let us know, or join our upcoming webinar at the end of the month.

Good news! We’ve recently updated the Layar SDK as we continue to make it as easy as possible to embed your own Augmented Reality (AR) experiences into your own iOS and Android apps.

Having the freedom to customize your AR experience to fit your brand and your users’ needs has always been a cornerstone of the Layar SDK, and with this latest update we aim to continue that tradition. So what’s new in the latest version?

Custom Location Provider
You no longer need to rely solely on the built-in GPS of the user’s device to get location data. Now you can hook into any location provider that you choose. For example, you can use iBeacons to create a more accurate location-based AR experience when indoors.

A note to developers: the Layar SDK simply allows for a custom location provider but does not include any alternative providers itself, that part is up to you!

More Custom Callbacks
We’ve added more callbacks that give you more control over the look-and-feel of your experience. For Geo Layers, you can now opt to remove the compass and the messages shown at the top which usually pertain to the number of results found nearby.

These changes make it even easier to create your own customized AR experience, whether that means creating a custom look or using advanced custom location providers to make a more engaging experience.

If you’re an existing SDK user, check your inbox for instructions on updating your SDK. Or if you’re interested in using the SDK, you can try it now for free!

Danish readers of SE og HØR – a television guide and celebrity news magazine – can now do far more than just “see and hear” as the publication’s name suggests.

With the easy-to-use Layar SDK, the publishers have launched Mit SE og HØR, a free mobile application for iOS and Android that brings the pages of the 75-year-old magazine to life with Augmented Reality.

Readers can gain access to exclusive videos, background stories, photo galleries, interactive polls, contests and much more simply by scanning the pages of the magazine. Extra digital content jumps off the page, providing readers with an engaging interactive experience.

“This is the next step in our development strategy to ensure that SE og HØR will continue to be the market leader in the future,” says Editor in Chief Niels Pinborg. “This means that we expand our magazine without going up in pages or price. And that means that we can pamper our most loyal customers.”

Not only is the editorial content of magazine interactive, but commercial content as well. The magazine says advertisers were eager to create more engaging digital experiences for their ads.

“It is clear that the ability to convert from print to purchase without having to leave the couch is quite interesting for our commercial partners, so here I see fairly large opportunities,” says Pinborg.

The Mit SE og HØR app is available now for free on iOS and Android in Denmark.

In September we told you about House of Fraser, one of the UK’s largest department store chains, and how it was using the Layar SDK to bring Augmented Reality to its customer retail experience. The store allowed customers to browse its online store from a print catalogue by scanning with the Layar SDK-powered House of Fraser mobile app.

With the Layar SDK, you can quickly and easily embed our Augmented Reality technology into your existing mobile app, giving you the ability to create a custom AR experience for your users within your app.

Now, HoF is back again with more great interactive content – this time in the form of shoppable windows for this year’s Black Friday promotions. The windows will launch on Wednesday, November 25th in stores across the UK and Ireland and will feature instructions for customers to download the House of Fraser app to access the shoppable windows journey.

A “Scan to Explore” feature on the House of Fraser iOS mobile app is triggered by scanning the window displays, which will allow customers to shop the best Black Friday deals in just a few taps, avoiding the busy queues inside the stores. A “Scan to win” feature will also be available so that customers can be in entered into a competition to win a £250 House of Fraser gift card.

To help guide customers and highlight the new technology, Black Friday “angels” will be on hand on November 27th in the top 14 stores across the UK and Ireland demonstrating to customers just how easy it is to scan the displays and to interact with the immersive content on the House of Fraser app.

“The event is a natural next step for House of Fraser on the path of setting trends in digital retail following previous trials of their app’s Augmented Reality features earlier this year,” said Hsio Ling Hee, Head of Custom Solutions at Layar/Blippar. “The new HoF app, powered by the Layar SDK, has a lot more to offer in the future and we are confident they will continue being one of the leaders of innovation for digital and Augmented Reality retail.”

Shoppers in the UK and Ireland can download the House of Fraser app for iOS here.