Immersive online shopping cements VRAI as a market leader

Summary

Buying jewelry should be an intimate experience—but buying jewelry online can be quite the opposite. It can be difficult for people to envision how a certain piece might look on them, and there’s the added concern of vetting companies for ethical sourcing.

VRAI is different. In an industry where many diamond labs engage in greenwashing, they are the world’s first certified carbon-neutral diamond foundry and the only vertically integrated retailer in lab-grown diamond jewelry. Employing master craftspeople to cut, polish, and set its diamonds, VRAI offers unlimited potential for customization paired with tailored advice from personal jewelry consultants. Whether shopping online or in store, they ensure that buying and trying on jewelry is accessible for everyone.

Challenge: Leading trends and increasing accessibility

As VRAI grew from online to brick-and-mortar retail, they relied on several  industry research methods:

• external user research through the UserTesting platform
• internal performance analytics
• firsthand experience of their diamond jewelry experts

At the same time, VRAI doesn’t want to just follow the crowd: “We certainly keep track of industry trends, but we also feel like we're really leading industry trends around lab-grown diamonds, customizations, and certified carbon emissions,” says VP of Digital Growth Sam Gardenswartz. 

Today, VRAI sells jewelry through its network of showrooms across North America, Asia, and Europe, but continues to pride itself on being a digital-first brand. Customers who can’t access a VRAI showroom can get the same service by booking a virtual consultation. 

Still, VRAI faced a common customer question that told them they needed to augment their virtual sessions with a more immersive experience: “What will this ring look like on me?”

Tangiblee’s Virtual Try-On was the solution to answering that recurring question.

Enter Tangiblee: the online shopping experience customers want

Gardenswartz came from another high-end online retailer with a strong virtual try-on program and was pleased to see that the Tangiblee team was onboarding the platform at VRAI. “I’d seen Tangiblee in action for other categories and was quite impressed,” says Gardenswartz. He especially liked Tangiblee’s ability to visually stack different products, as customers often want to stack a wedding band with an engagement ring.

Gardenswartz appreciated the different advantages of the On Me and On Model products, depending on what the customer wants to achieve. On Me uses augmented reality to show a user how rings might look on their particular hand. On Model, meanwhile, allows for visual comparisons of a product across different bodies and looks. Gardenswartz says using their own model shots helps VRAI maintain their brand identity. 

 All of these options are packaged inside a particularly strong mobile experience, which is critical to VRAI as mobile represents the majority of their traffic. “We've now grown to have retail stores, but it's very important to us to continue having a strong digital-first business,” says Gardenswartz. “We believe that luxury should be available to everyone. With Tangiblee, we’re able to deliver a premium virtual try-on experience to all customers, even if they don’t live near a store.”

Results: An improved shopping experience for all customers

Adopting Tangiblee has translated into an improved shopping experience for customers: Gardenswartz’s digital growth team has run A/B tests that prove the value of Tangiblee’s Try-On features, demonstrated through increased engagement and conversion rates.

“We’re very pleased with it. In testing, we’ve seen Tangiblee improve the shopper experience and drive up conversions,”Gardenswartz says.

The biggest highlight for Gardenswartz, though? The quality of the Tangiblee team’s service.When VRAI added the On Model feature, all the digital growth team had to do was give Tangiblee their model images—Tangiblee took care of everything else. “There’s always value in having a vendor who specializes,” Gardenswartz emphasizes.

Now, when VRAI launches a new product, their team doesn’t have to manually create new image assets, saving time and reducing implementation costs. “It’s all automated, which is really appreciated and is a real strength of the software,” Gardenswartz says.

“We’ve been working with the Tangiblee team on further integrations, and they’ve been super helpful. They’re a great team to work with,”

A smoother journey to the perfect ring

Tangiblee allows customers to start their buying journey sooner: “People will come to their diamond expert appointment and say, ‘I tried this on online,’” Gardenswartz says. Even before a customer arrives at their virtual consultation, they’ve engaged with the products that interest them.

Tangiblee widens VRAI’s reach for customers beyond their retail stores and improves accessibility to VRAI’s luxury products as a natural extension of their digital-first business. This partnership provides a seamless virtual experience for VRAI customers, giving them a confidence boost early in their buying journey that translates to lower returns, higher satisfaction, and a priceless experience.