Did you know? The average American spends more than seven hours each day on nonwork-related screen time. Of those seven hours of nonwork-related screen time, at least three hours is on the cell phone. If those numbers shock you, how about the fact that Americans spent more than $257 billion in ecommerce sales! With these numbers in mind, it is general business practice to have some sort of digital presence in today’s marketplace. But digital presence means so much more than just a functional website. So, what are some of today’s leading digital visualization tools and how are they being integrated into the world of tile and interior design?
Crossville is a leader in digital visualization technology, and we partner with top tech developers to design tools specifically for the surfacing industry. We’re leading the tile industry in making tools available to help the specification process be simple and interactive so designers can make selections with confidence.
Recently at Coverings, Jaime Touton, our digital marketing expert, teamed with Maticad to showcase the shift in technology and explain how Crossville is expanding the tech tools offered providing easy access for the tile design industry.
Here are some of the key takeaways from their presentation:
- Realize the importance of the physical aspect of a product in the decision making process – customers want to touch and feel it. But digital visualization tools can provide enormous benefits for interior designers and homeowners starting projects. Digital visualization will not and should not replace in-person experiences but can offer customers and designers a new way to access products.
- The first place people go now for inspiration is online – meet them there, online, to help grow their inspiration. Crossville’s Cross Vision (room visualizer) allows you to create, save, and print visualizations of wall and floor tile with Crossville stock environments. It lets you swap out the walls, the floors and the countertops, and put in different products. Inspiration starts here as designers and homeowners can play around with ideas and products.
- After inspiration, it’s time to really build the space. With Crossville’s TilePlanner, you can custom building a 3D space, almost like using a miniCAD tool. Easy to visualize the space before making the final commitment with product or color layout and before you begin an expensive installation. With TilePlanner, you can customize the room’s floor plan using a template or inputting exact measurements, drag and drop furniture into the space, select Crossville tile collections to floors and walls, and modify the design until the desired aesthetic is achieved.
- In addition to room visualizer tools, Crossville has added 3D visualization to individual products on their website. It’s absolutely necessary for anyone selling products to at least have 2D images of products; by adding 3D products, customers can rotate, zoom in, and even see surface reflection offering more interaction with the product.
- The digital technology tools should be paired with the physical product experience in order to build a complete consumer experience, bridging the digital and physical in the end to drive sales.
What’s next? Crossville will continue to develop tools that assist homeowners and professionals in the visualization of products and of rooms, and these tools will continue getting faster, more efficient and easier to use.
