How to Create Engagement with 3D Interactive Product Descriptions

Ever wish your products could tell a story? Ever wanted to take your customers on a mini-tour of your products’ most compelling features? With Sketchfab annotations, you can mark different points on your products, save the best camera positions, and add interactive product descriptions.

Take your customers on an immersive online adventure with 3D annotations!

Consumers are always looking for more information to make informed purchases. Your product descriptions are critical for them when considering an online purchase. 3D annotations are a great way to enrich your ecommerce experience, to highlight contextual information, and to communicate your value.

Below, for example, you can see how Bogner uses 3D annotations on their ecommerce platform to help their customers better discover their products.

Another advantage of 3D is the ability to easily showcase complex and/or large products. 3D Annotations can help customers understand the different elements of a complex product and how that product works. They are an effective tool to support your sales team.

Schneider Electric, for example, has developed a 3D catalog of its products. Instead of shipping their large products to the other side of the world for demonstration, Schneider Electric only has to share the URLs of their 3D models.

They also reuse their 3D models in trade shows to demonstrate their value and educate prospects. You can try an annotated and animated version of one of their products here. 

To see how 3D annotated ads foster audience engagement, check out the 3D annotated ad (scroll down to see the model) for the new Porsche Panamera that was showcased in The Economist.

This immersive experience showcasing an annotated and animated 3D model increases customer engagement. It gives prospective customers the ability to explore a product from all angles, from up close to far away, as if they were in a store. 3D interactive product descriptions can take customers step-by-step through a whole product.

Porsche Panamera – 3D model with annotations

In the current digital ecosystem, it’s essential to create innovative experiences to increase end-user engagement. With 3D annotated scenes your audience can go on a journey through a physical space, like a city, a castle, or a museum.

This 3D immersive experience created by the BBC lets you discover Assyrian treasures discovered in Northern Iraq.  This is made accessible for all audiences thanks to the annotations and audio and visual effects. It was a big success, with a lot of social media buzz, and was nominated for a Webby Award.

Sketchfab’s technology also lets users explore any potential retail environments digitally created by a creative team. 3D annotations about digital merchandising can then provide valuable information and guidelines to your team, eliminating time-intensive meetings, feedback, and physical build-outs. 

In this example, you can easily explore Timberland’s concept store and indicate in the annotations the type of product displayed.

Timberland shoe shop by Julien Gauthrin

Finally, annotations can help with product development. You can quickly and easily add product descriptions to your 3D models allowing you to iterate on your designs with more flexibility, drastically reducing the number of physical prototypes, and speed up the overall product development process.

Check out the example below in which Sketchfab easily reviewed the design and indicated necessary changes on a Nike Air Max 270.

If you want to learn more about adding annotations to your models, check out our dedicated Help Center page.

If you are interested in creating a 3D showcase of your products, visit our plans page and subscribe to one of our licenses.