Online store walkthrough
Now imagine this instead – the version of online shopping we should have built years ago.
Shoppers open their favourite supermarket’s website and step into a virtual store. They walk down aisles, glance across shelves, compare prices, and explore categories as they would in person.
They ‘pick up’ a product, rotate it, and drop it into their basket. Cross-sells and promotions appear naturally beside the items they’re buying – milk next to cereal, pasta beside sauce, wine near the cheese.
They aren’t scrolling a catalogue. They’re shopping the shelves.
And yes – we know what you’re thinking. Haven’t we heard this before? The idea of a 3D digital store isn’t new. But earlier attempts came with baggage: heavy hardware, specialist headsets, clunky environments and huge costs. No wonder the industry still winces when it hears ‘3D shopping’.
The e-commerce experience needs a reboot
But wince as they might, retailers still need to grasp the fact that it’s time for a radical shake-up.
In other sectors, the sense of excitement that drives buying decisions in the physical world is already standard. Few home buyers visit a prospective new house or apartment without first taking a virtual tour. Holidaymakers routinely explore hotel rooms before booking. And car buyers can ‘test drive’ their dream model online.
So why in retail, one of the most creative, consumer centric sectors on Earth, are we still staring at static product grids?
There’s no good reason. It’s time for product grids to be consigned to history.
From planograms to immersive commerce
At Buzz 3D we’re kick-starting the revolution.
We’ve changed the dynamic by creating a practical 3D platform that’s built for the modern online shopper. It’s fast, automated and browser native. It also integrates seamlessly into existing legacy systems.
We can generate an interactive planogram in the morning, drop it into a survey and have behavioural data back by the end of the day. Nobody else can do that, so why stop at surveys?
“But online is different!” they say. “You’ll never shop like you do in the store!”
Wrong.
Retailers already use Planogram simulations to present whole shelf views to online shoppers as part of Market Research. The concept of shopping online from a shelf and expecting in-store levels of basket value has already been established.
The thought that this test mode could translate into a real digital shopping experience but with physical store-sized baskets is genuinely tantalising. So why isn’t it being done?
Buzz 3D’s planogram technology streamlines the online testing process so it can now be applied directly to e-commerce as consumer-facing interactive shelves. If you’re a retailer looking to stand out online, we want to hear from YOU!
The ground we’re breaking is helping bridge 3 silos: planogram design, customer surveys, and real-time data capture. Currently, this intelligence is being used to optimise real-world stores; soon, it’ll shape digital ones too. The same behavioural intelligence that powers our planograms has the potential to recast the way consumers shop online.
E-commerce is the fourth silo we’re uniquely positioned to bridge. Moving from research to full-on e-commerce will allow retailers to sell online from accurate digital twins of their physical stores, built on the same real-world behavioural insights that optimise those stores today – where every shelf, product and promotion is placed intentionally.
Shoppers will move through digital environments that mirror what they’re used to experiencing on the high street, discovering products naturally thanks to their curiosity, instead of being funnelled through static grids and search bars because an algorithm tells them to.
This isn’t a gimmick or a metaverse fantasy. It’s the next logical step in how technology will support retail.
Why this matters for retailers
The commercial implications for retailers are significant. Given that online planogram testing is already trusted to provide a 92% alignment to real world shopper behaviour for business planning exercises, why not extend this to real sales?
An e-commerce environment which replicates real-world shopping patterns would instantly deliver all the same benefits of a physical store layout to the online consumer:
1. Improved brand visibility: products live in context, not buried in grids.
2. Higher conversion rates: shoppers can see, interact with, and compare products as they would in-store.
3. Greater cross-sell opportunities: categories connect naturally – no “recommended products” box needed.
The challenge
The vision is clear. Buzz 3D technology is uniquely positioned to present a real opportunity for scalable, cost-effective, immersive and intuitive shopping experiences that put the human back into digital retail.
But there is a caveat – this isn’t just about technology. It’s about imagination and daring to re-invent the online retail paradigm so it moves beyond the grid layout that shoppers have been staring at since 1995.
We’re excited about the potential for a radically different online retail world, but we know change can be difficult for some retailers. We have solutions for that too.
Please check out our free interactive shelf demo. I’d love to hear what readers think – this conversation is long overdue!
