3 Ways to Grow your Business with Virtual Reality

With business slowly returning back to normal, many professionals have been cautiously optimistic that things will start picking back up in the near future. Perhaps you share the same sentiments, especially as restrictions are gradually being lifted. While the light at the end of the tunnel is certainly quickly approaching us, there is no question that the client’s needs, expectations, and buying behaviours have changed.

For the past year-plus, offices, showrooms and any non-essential businesses were forced to shut their doors, causing professionals to turn to mobile online technologies to stay connected with team members and, most importantly, clients. Since in-person meetings were no longer an option, advanced tech solutions like VR became an essential tool to help professionals communicate their visual story, design intention, and to provide an effective yet impressive experience regardless of location. 

Although we have long predicted the future of virtual reality and its role in revolutionizing design, this extended remote work period fast-tracked demand for virtual immersive solutions. From how it works with clients to the way they generate new opportunities, virtual reality is creating entirely new business models and opportunities post-pandemic for companies to grow their business - here are three ways VR can and will change your business for the better.

1. Business Development

We are currently living in the age of the experience economy where consumers, to some degree, prefer experiences over standard goods or services. Not only are they willing to both search and invest in incredible experiences in their downtime, but consumers are also starting to expect businesses to wrap an experience around their traditional offerings. What this means for business is in order to keep up with the ever-changing business landscape and to stand out from other competitors, you should consider curating an experience that will go hand-in-hand with your product, service, or design. 

Virtual reality technology is exciting and attention-grabbing, and we’ve seen this first hand. Our Yulio users have shared with us time and time again how virtual reality is great at opening discussions as well as commanding the focus of their clients. Plus, as visual storytelling continues to play a vital part in pitches and presentations, VR is the perfect medium to let your clients experience, interact, and walk through your vision. By including a VR experience in your presentation, your clients will not only be impressed with your team going the extra mile, but they will also have greater ease in recalling both your business, pitch and proposal, which could lead to repeat business or even better, greater business by referral.

2. Close Deals Faster

The real magic of virtual reality in the design industry is when your client is able to step into your design and it becomes their reality. Experiencing your designs in virtual reality is the best way we know to communicate your vision to anyone, but especially to those with no background in design. One of the biggest barriers in the design process is communication between designer and client. Reading floor plans, deciphering renderings and spatial understanding are skills that come second nature to professional designers but can pose a massive challenge for the average person. 

Seeing and visualizing perfectly your vision will be key in helping you close deals faster. VR is the difference between handing a client a carpet sample and showing them what the carpet looks like virtually inside your design. This technology is game-changing, especially since your clients will be able to take a true-to-scale virtual tour of your design and grasp your vision in the way they understand best - by seeing it with their own eyes. Where clients would once take hours or even days to reach decisions, VR will tell them in seconds what they do and don’t like about a space. And better yet, virtual reality can actually reveal to you, the designer, things you may not notice in a simple 3D rendering. 

One of our clients explains how stepping into their design revealed that the sightlines in one of their spaces were problematic – something that, without virtual reality, they couldn’t have known until after construction. This is a perfect example of how virtual reality predicts real-world design problems before you’re anywhere near construction.

3. Increased Return On Investment

This last one is where VR has an enormous benefit - using virtual reality as an ROI driver. We have a full whitepaper covering how exactly virtual reality is able to create ROI for your firm by enabling faster collaboration, shortening the design cycle and reducing the back and forth in between iterations. Here are just a few reasons why VR is such a powerful ROI driver:

• Low startup costs - VR headsets have progressed to being incredibly powerful and affordable. Plus, annual subscriptions to VR authoring platforms give you access to a wide range of features that will help you add pertinent details to your projects
• Reducing late-stage changes - with virtual reality, catching costly mistakes is much easier since you can instantly see it, just like our client story we just shared. This helps maximize the full budget without needing to allocate a lot of resources to revisions
• Fits with your workflows - we designed Yulio to fit seamlessly into your design workflows. There is no need for long-winded training. Our platform was created to be intuitive to navigate so you can spend less time trying to find your tools and more time creating stunning presentations. 

To read the full whitepaper on VR Integration that Drives ROI, please click here to download the free resource. For more information about Yulio and how you can utilize our platform to take your business to the next level, click here to schedule a time to meet with our team - we would be happy to connect with you.

Original post from July 11, 2016.