SNAP’s New AR Scan

On my own exploration into Instagram and Facebook Business, my excitement on Snap’s new AR Scan exploded. Snap’s unveil of Scan, an Enhanced AR feature to identify the things we love links to my curiosity about social media for E-commerce.

Social Media For E-Commerce

With online presence increasing every second, it is safe to say buying online (e-commerce) is booming. Almost every major shop in the world now has an online presence, and new online-only retailers seem to launch every day. The space of e-commerce is evolving and competition creates innovations in how value is transferred to consumers.

Considering 71% of adults with Internet access use social media, almost every business can benefit from marketing on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The booming e-commerce industry for me would only get bigger with adapting technologies in payment, access and logistics.

Visual Messaging

Snapchat (now Snap) shocked everyone (Edudzi!) with its record growth numbers of  293 million daily users —growing faster each day. The implications are what makes this concept interesting, because of the focus on visual messaging.

A lot of online consumers are now driven to Tiktok as their go-to for entertaining and educative content; sorry Instagram Reels. Snap seems to have a good sense of where to place themselves in terms of what is next.

Benefits

Furthermore, our online culture can be useful if your target audience is young, as 71% of Snapchat’s users are under the age of 25. But given that only 1% of marketers say they use the platform, starting now can help you stay ahead of the curve and reach your audience before your competitors catch on.

If you decide to add Snapchat to your marketing strategy, be sure to announce that you’re using it on your other social media accounts so your customers know how to find you.

Just like Google Lens and Pinterest’s Lens, Snap Scan offer a visual search engine to identifying similar images of items scanned. From launch, I could probably guess it would only get better with time just as Google Lens.

“Snap will be continually adding new categories of intelligence to Scan, and over the next few months, people will see the Snap camera increasingly get smarter by adding more capabilities and a handful of new partner experiences,”

Alongside making the Scan feature useful for mobile users, Snap mentioned that it was in plans to bring new and helpful experiences through its next-generation AR glasses Spectacles.

Competitors

Recently, Facebook announced its E-Commerce push through Whatsapp and Instagram widening their reach for domination. This brings up the question of how and where Snap Scan can go. Although it is too early to predict anything considering Facebook is dominating even with Apple’s recent restrictive efforts. 

When does Snap Scan Arrive?

Snap announced that the Scan feature on the home screen would begin rolling out globally to all iOS users. It will also be available to all Android users over the next few weeks, the company said in a press statement.

You may need to download the latest Snapchat app on your phone to experience the changes. Once you get the update, you’ll notice that the existing Snapchat Camera icon will be replaced with the Scan feature to let you quickly access AR-based filters and lenses to discover and understand your surroundings. It will sit at the front and centre of the social multimedia app — alongside the existing Snap Map, Chat, Stories, and Spotlight icons.

Let us know when you start using the new feature and what you think about social media for e-commerce?