A virtual sofa? Have we really reached the point where we don’t even need furniture anymore? We’ll just get up from our virtual beds, turn on our virtual coffee machine and then sit on our virtual sofas? Not sure that’s quite what John Lewis had in mind when then came up with their ‘virtual sofa’ – it’s actually a new augmented-reality feature on their app that helps you choose the best sofa. Ahhh, we get it now.
The new feature will allow us to see how our potential new sofa or armchair will look in our homes before we buy. All you have to do is download the John Lewis app on your smart phone or smart device, open it up and tap then ‘View In Your Room’ banner on the homepage and the button below the product. Then it will take you through ‘scanning’ (basically like taking a picture) your room, soon a square will appear where you can tap to see the sofa of your choice, in situ. Ooooh, so clever.
Sean O’Connor, Partner and Head of Online Product & Customer Experience, said, ‘Buying a new sofa or armchair is a very considered purchase as it’s something we tend to have for a long time. From talking to our customers we know that many of them go through as many as 13 different stages before making their final choice of sofa; so we wanted to simplify this process for them.’
(Image credit: John Lewis )
The launch of Virtual Sofa follows the successful trial of John Lewis’ Virtual Lipstick feature launched last year, which gave shoppers the chance to test hundreds of colours in real time before buying. Not going to lie, the Real Homes team had a lot of fun playing around with that when it was launched and this time we can actually call it research, not just procrastination! Brb while we go and see what every sofa on the John Lewis website would look like in the corner of our office…