Luxury product pages: when 3D hurts the brand

Luxury buyers take their time

A luxury buyer thinks longer before ordering. Contentsquare puts luxury conversion at 1.4% on desktop and 0.9% on mobile, and explains it with a longer consideration cycle.

So the page must not push. No countdown, no pop-up after ten seconds, no 'only two left'. I think the page should behave like a good salesperson: present, quiet, ready when asked.

A luxury page waits. It never hurries the buyer.

Speed is part of the impression

The wait is the first thing the buyer sees. In a 2020 study for Google, 55 and Deloitte found that on luxury sites a 0.1 second faster mobile page went together with 40.1% more users moving from product page to add to basket. Correlation, not proof.

In both of our examples, compression took most of the weight off.

1. ·An office chair, the raw file as it came from the 3D artist: 31 MB. After our compression: 8.9 MB. Same triangle count, nothing removed.
2. ·A suitcase model we own, built for a demo: 13.4 MB raw, 2.0 MB compressed.

Compress the model before you touch anything else on the page.

Where interaction starts hurting

We made three of these mistakes ourselves. I found them myself on the first version of our suitcase demo. We fixed all three.

Important to note: in my experience the buyer does not blame the software. The buyer blames the Maison.

1. 01A generic loading screen. The first thing on screen was a default loader, not our brand.
2. 02Lag after most commands. Each command waited for the previous animation plus 200 milliseconds. Now commands run without waiting in line.
3. 03A camera that stayed loose. After a click on a hotspot the model could still be rotated freely, away from the detail. Now a hotspot click locks rotation and leaves only zoom.
4. 04A texture prettier than the material. The buyer receives the real leather and compares it to the screen.
5. 05A model heavier than it needs to be. Detail nobody can see at screen size, paid for in seconds of waiting.

A Maison is judged by its worst click, not its best.

What interaction should do instead

The camera does the salesperson's job. On the Globe-Trotter custom configurator, live on globe-trotter.com, the camera moves to the part the buyer just chose.

We have no conversion number from this client and we do not claim one. What we can show is what the page does:

1. ·Open the interior, and the case opens.
2. ·Choose the trolley, and the handle extends.
3. ·Add initials, and they appear on the model before payment.
4. ·Share the build as a link. The price and crafting time, three to four weeks, sit under the model.

Every animation answers a choice the buyer just made. Nothing moves on its own.

What to check before launch

Our delivery standard is a rule, not a measurement: around 100,000 triangles per product, textures at most 2048 by 2048 pixels, compression done by us before the file reaches the page.

Five checks, in this order. If one fails, I would ship the page without the model until it passes.

1. 01File size after compression, opened on a phone, on mobile data.
2. 02First screen is the brand, never a default loader.
3. 03Every click answers at once. No queue behind an animation.
4. 04Camera locks when the buyer focuses on a detail.
5. 05Material on screen matches the material in the box, checked against a physical sample.

In doubt, less interaction. My rule: a slow model is worse for a Maison than no model.