When you think of augmented reality, you’re probably thinking of video games. The recent example of Pokemon Go showed how great this technology is in gaming and other companies are developing their own similar things.

But augmented reality has so many more practical applications in the business world. You might not realize it yet, but augmented reality could be the future of business, especially as remote working starts to take over the traditional office.

When employees are spread out around the country or even the world, we need a way that we can recreate being in the same room and working on things together, that’s where augmented reality comes in. These are just some of the incredible ways that it could revolutionize the business world.

Promotions

Augmented reality in physical shops is something that could really take off, especially when it comes to promotions. If a customer were to go into a shop that was using augmented reality to hide things around the shop with the promise of a discount for people that find them, you could encourage shoppers to browse the entire store without them even knowing it.

You could also display retail branding materials that would pop up on people’s phones when they came past. It’s a great way to catch people’s attention without having to pay for the physical promotional materials.

More Information

Another great use for augmented virtual reality in shops is providing more detailed information. Obviously, there isn’t room for every single product to have a detailed list of information about it on display, the shop would get way too crowded. But with augmented reality, a customer could look at a product through their phone and up pops all of the information they could ever need about that product.

Try Before You Buy

This is one that has already been launched by some furniture companies. When you’re buying a sofa, for example, you can’t really tell how it’s going to look in your house until you get it home. Well, you didn’t used to be able to anyway.

Now, with augmented reality, you can.

Some furniture stores have a function on their site where you can place furniture in your house using augmented reality and see whether it looks good or not. Fashion companies have also adopted something similar that lets you try on clothes virtually before you buy them. It’s a great way of recreating the physical shopping experience when customers are browsing products online.

Training

Augmented reality is great from a customer point of view but it also has its uses for staff as well. Training will be completely revolutionized by augmented reality because you can use it to simulate real world scenarios. Instead of just showing employees a presentation about what they should do in a certain situation, you can have them practice it as if it were real. That kind of training will be more interesting for staff as well as being more effective because they’re getting hands on experience.

Augmented reality is set to change the business world in the next few years so you should start investing in it now.