“We will give you the secret key to the metaverse.”
What is the metaverse? How should you be using the metaverse? What’s the future of the metaverse? If you’ve ever asked any of these questions, you’ll find your answers from Neha Singh, the Founder and CEO of Obsess, a company that is bringing the metaverse to life for brands and consumers everywhere. You can hear what she had to say on Up Next in Commerce, and you can read some highlights below.
How can brands start to approach the metaverse?
Brands have been trying to understand and tap into the full potential of the internet since the dawn of ecommerce. The metaverse adds another layer to that potential, and now brands are wondering how they can approach it and how they should be thinking about metrics and use cases. The best way to think about the metaverse is as a place to bring more of the retail experience into the digital world. It is a way to bring discovery and inspiration to the online shopping experience.
“How can brands capture the rest of that behavior that exists today in retail stores of discovery, inspiration? How do brands capture that? And metaverse is really one solution overall to capture that. How brands can get started on that today, it’s actually very easy because the technology exists just on the web. You don’t need to be on other platforms. You don’t need to even have 3D models of all your products. You can just use images off of your existing product feed and API. And the only thing that you really need to think about is what is it that you want to create and you think will engage your consumers?”
What does an example of a brand using the metaverse look like?
Obsess is already working with brands to bring customers into the metaverse (visit the Up Next in Commerce Youtube page to see Neha’s example). And when consumers are able to shop in the metaverse, the experience is much more in line with an organic experience such as at a mall or market. Discovery happens more organically and is less dependent on search.
“Instead of just always seeing products in the context of a retail setting, you can actually see products in the context of where you would use them. And that actually increases conversion rate. It increases performance because people might discover products that they didn’t think of. In ecommerce, everything is very search and filter. But [in the metaverse], you might just walk around, you’ll be like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’”
How do people perceive the metaverse?
According to consumer surveys, there is a lot of confusion about the metaverse and what it actually is, if it’s owned by one brand in particular, or even how to interact with it. Ultimately, the metaverse is simply a collection of technologies that are creating a new version of the internet.
“The metaverse obviously right now is a very big topic and it encompasses a lot of different technologies. It is really everything from 3D virtual environments, to how we will all become avatars, to how we will have these different activities, a lot of activities that we might do in real life today or in regular digital platforms, that we now do in the metaverse. But then it also involves technologies like blockchain and virtual reality and augmented reality. So it’s really all of these different pieces that have been around and have been talked about for the last several years and what has happened, really with Facebook’s name change, is that there’s a new name to this collective set of new technologies. And really, it’s ultimately the next version of the internet.”
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