EP058 Hands-on Ecommerce Experiences on Apple's Vision Pro === [00:00:00] Darin Newbold: Well, and good day and welcome to Commerce today we have a very exciting episode here, hands-on e-commerce Well, and good day and welcome to Commerce. Today we have a very exciting episode here, hands-on e-commerce experiences on the Apple Vision Pro. And Josh just got his brand new Apple Vision Pro and well, as you can probably see, we haven't even been able to get it off of him. [00:00:21] Joshua Warren: Yeah. But, but Darin, you don't understand. [00:00:23] It's so cool. It's like you're in the room here with me. Like I could just reach out and like [00:00:29] Darin Newbold: it. I'm real. Josh, I'm, I'm really here. [00:00:31] Joshua Warren: Oh, oh, oh, oh. You're, wait, wait. Oh, you are in the room with me. Okay. Okay. Well then I guess I can take that off now. [00:00:38] Darin Newbold: Alright, folks. Well, enough fun and, uh, frivolity here with us, but we are excited about this and it is fun. [00:00:45] It's cool and it is simply amazing. So, hey, it's here. But more importantly, Josh, well why do we care? I. [00:00:54] Joshua Warren: Yeah, and there's obviously a lot of hype. It's exciting and it's new, but when you look at it, Apple's sold 200,000 Vision Pro headsets. They're only selling it in the U.S so far. Um, there's 200 eighty-three million e-commerce users in the U.S. [00:01:07] So at most 0.07% of our customers have one of these devices. However, apple, and actually analysts are saying that, and the analysts are all over the place, but they're saying anywhere from half a million to a million vision Pros are gonna be delivered this year I. Still, that's only 3.5%. But when you look, apple is rumored to release a less expensive vision pro by 2025. [00:01:31] This is exactly what they did with the tablet market. And now look, they have a majority share in the tablet market and they have kind of led the way in tablet technology. So just like how they bet on the iPad becoming the future of computing, apple is betting that consumers are gonna make XR or extended reality the way of computing going forward. [00:01:52] And e-commerce sites need to be ready for that. [00:01:55] Darin Newbold: One more new cool thing, xr, extended reality. Gosh, I have enough trouble with just regular reality, let alone I don't, I did. Yeah, please. No extensions on my reality. All right, so that is really, really cool. I would guess that by today we are well over 200,000 Vision Pro, um, based on when you wrote this and when we put together our notes and stuff. [00:02:17] But it's happening, [00:02:19] Joshua Warren: and I think honestly, there are limit's gonna be how many they can make. Exactly. Like this is a complicated device. Yeah. So [00:02:25] Darin Newbold: Yeah. We, uh, you let me try it. It's amazing. [00:02:28] but let's, let's talk about that trying it, what's, uh, what's your initial experience? Because yes, you are an early adopter. [00:02:36] Yes, you love new, groovy, cool technology, but there was a real reason and you really did look at what are the, some of the, and we'll get to some of the e-commerce experiences, but. What was your first thoughts? [00:02:47] Joshua Warren: My first thoughts really were, I mean, it was one word. [00:02:50] It was Wow. Um, so I have somewhere in this mess of an office here at Creatuity. We have an original, um, Oculus development kit from like, when they first started that headset of used. The, the finished Oculus Rift, the Valve Index, lots of headsets. None of them are anywhere close to the Vision Pro. Um, it is amazing. [00:03:11] A big part of that is you're not tethered to a computer and you're not holding any controllers. Yes, as you saw at the start of the show, you do have this big, bulky thing on your face. But other than that, and that's a big difference than these other VR devices. Other than that, it's a pretty seamless experience. [00:03:26] Um, it really felt like years into the future compared to those other headsets. [00:03:31] Darin Newbold: And I'll give you my quick, quick analysis just in trying it briefly. [00:03:35] The couple of things that I noticed, one, the sound is amazing. I mean, we watched just a little bit of a movie and just immersive sound. Being able to be immersed in the content. I. Was probably one of the biggest things that, that I really noticed in the short time taking a look at it. And then lastly, it really is interesting. [00:03:54] Now we recognize that the versions of the software are gonna be upgraded regularly and constantly. But even now, being able to, I could see your eyes now, it wasn't perfect. Wasn't maybe quite as what we saw in some of the Apple stuff, but, but it was close. So those have been fantastic. But Josh, all right. [00:04:12] Enough about the fun, cool, wow factor. Can, can you buy and sell stuff with this thing? [00:04:17] Joshua Warren: Yeah. Um. You can with a little asterisk. So I was really excited because Apple had announced, hey, the Vision Pro it, it runs Safari. It's gonna run a version of Safari that supports WebXR. [00:04:30] Darin Newbold: XR. [00:04:31] Joshua Warren: That's just a technology that allows normal websites to provide augmented reality experiences. So that means you go to a website and if you have implemented WebXR with your product data and your product photos, people could actually have that augmented reality experience you've seen before of like. [00:04:47] Virtually trying on the product, holding it in their hands, that sort of thing. Turns out there was an asterisk on that. WebXR is not supported yet. Um, that is gonna come in a future update. So that was a little, little disappointing. Um, obviously it is coming so it will happen, but it does not happen yet. [00:05:06] So then I just kind of went for a spin around the web and obviously the best experience I had was Apple Store, believe it or not. Apple, I think, had a, a little leg up on optimizing their website for the Vision Pro. really the, the big thing, and this is a theme you're gonna hear a lot about today, is Apple's site had the fewest selectable items on the page. [00:05:25] And that's important because with the vision pro, you use your eyes to move around a page, you use your eyes to select items, and then you do this fun little finger gesture to actually click on an item. So when there's a page that has a lot of selectable items on it. It, your eyes get tired, like it's kinda hard to move around. [00:05:42] So Apple had reduced the number of selectable items and then also kind of interesting, I'm so used to optimizing for above the fold while Apple optimized for eye level. And so right in kind of almost the middle of the page where my eyes naturally fell. There's a series of eye or photos of their main product categories, and it was so easy to just rub my eyes over those and then select the one that I wanted. [00:06:06] So. That was a really solid [00:06:08] Darin Newbold: and that makes a, that makes a huge difference. So I imagine that as we, as we go forward, we're gonna be talking about kind of, okay, are you creating this for the XR experience versus just a, a regular two-D or just regular, any of that boring, regular reality all the way. [00:06:25] The old way. Right, right. Is there, what other experiences did you have? Maybe looking at the few other sites that may have started this. I know you checked out Nike and with some stuff and even, even our good old standby that I always like Amazon. And what was those experiences? [00:06:43] Joshua Warren: So Nike was kind of middle of the road, um, and I realized, I'm not sure if Nike actually optimized yet for the Vision Pro or if they just have a really good tablet site. [00:06:51] Because basically the default view size that you get on the Vision Pro. That triggered a version of Nike's site that didn't have a really complicated main menu. So it was kind of just like new men's women's kids That was it, Um, so that definitely helped. But then when I got into a product detail page, I was joking with you when we were playing with a vision pro earlier, our eye muscles are gonna get a workout. [00:07:14] So trying to select a size because again. You know, some of these shoes have 15 different sizes available. They're tiny little squares next to each other, and you're having to move your eye to get to like, okay, vision Pro, I'm focusing right here, select this size. Um, so that, that wasn't a lot of fun. [00:07:30] Um, and I think that's an area that's gonna take some experimentation for websites to figure out how do you give a good experience for a 2-D user as well as a Vision Pro user when they're, when you have a lot of sizes to select between. [00:07:45] Darin Newbold: Well, and something content-wise for us, not here, but for next time we to look at, is what's the build-out of a site? What's the, what's the uplift to making those changes so that you're prepared and ready to go for it? [00:07:57] Joshua Warren: Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. [00:07:58] Darin Newbold: That'll be interesting. All right. Well, was there anything else around the e-commerce experience that you wanted to share before we, [00:08:04] Joshua Warren: well, I gotta talk about our friends at Amazon. Okay. [00:08:06] Um, who may not be our friends after this. So the worst experience was on Amazon and, several people in the industry I've talked to about this weren't surprised. Amazon kind of has a history of having a cluttered website. And that does not work well on the Vision Pro. So half the time I couldn't get their main navigation even open because you have to select a thing that says all three letters at the very top left of the site, and there's like 30 other menu items, to the right of it. [00:08:34] And so I kept getting, I think it was a Valentine's Day category. That I kept getting every time I tried to select all. but then even once I got to a product detail page, everything shows up as a selectable element and I'm not sure why. [00:08:46] Like, I don't know if that's the way they coded their site and it just isn't a problem on anything with the vision Pro. But Anytime my eyes would go across anything, it would pop out a little bit. The way the Vision Pro shows you something selectable. So even like a little bit of terms text off to the side would pop out like that. [00:09:03] So it was really hard to get to, you know, if I wanted to add to cart, if I wanted to select a color, um, that sort of thing. And then on all the sites, um, I noticed that the checkout experience varies a lot. And the big thing is there's some sites out there like Nordstrom, um, and I'm gonna talk about them a little bit more later, but they try to get so fancy with their checkout that you can't auto fill some elements and vision Pro users are gonna wanna auto fill, because otherwise you get a floating keyboard in front of you. [00:09:32] And this is release day. Launch day. So you can't do the cool typing in the air thing yet. You use your I to select each letter and then you do this. [00:09:41] Darin Newbold: Oh, [00:09:41] Joshua Warren: so I had to do that through my name, my address, my credit card number, um, not a lot of fun. So there's gonna be some checkout optimization needed. [00:09:50] Darin Newbold: Wow. Yeah. That's gonna be, that'll be a big challenge. Well, all right. This is, uh, this is their, their initial run. Kind of what do you see maybe as Apple's kind of product cycle with this, and what does that, what does that ultimately look like, you think? [00:10:05] Joshua Warren: Yeah, and that's, that's something I think before we talk about the side improvements that retailers need to make now, I think that's important to realize. [00:10:12] 'cause I think a lot of people are riding off the Vision pro right now and saying Oh it's an expensive luxury product, or only big brands are gonna use it. That sort of thing. Well, people said that about the iPad and the tablet experience, and I remember when you, the first iPad, you had to, most apps didn't support the iPad yet. [00:10:30] You would run their iPhone app and it would have that black box around it and it wouldn't look very good. And it was kind of hard to use. It took a while for native apps to show up. Kinda the same thing happened when they launched Apple Silicon. When they said, Hey, you can run all iPhone and iPad apps. [00:10:44] Well, it turns out a lot of app authors opted out of that and you couldn't run those. And it took some time for the apps to build up the support the build out The same thing's happened with the Vision Pro. it can run iPhone and iPad apps. A Lot of authors have opted out. Um, but I think just like how Apple, they didn't create the tablet category, but they took over the tablet category. [00:11:05] They didn't create the VR AR XR category, but they're taking it over and I think especially this summer, they're releasing a beta of Vision OS two. So normally new product comes out and takes about a year for the first OS update. They're gonna have one out this summer, and I think we're gonna see hopefully things like WebXR and just greater adoption of the Vision Pro. [00:11:27] Darin Newbold: Do you foresee them potentially even having A, I wouldn't call it a separate app store, but definitely an app. I mean, they have a Mac App store and an iPhone or an iDevice app store. [00:11:39] Joshua Warren: it's, it works very similar to iPhone and iPad apps. So when you're on an iPad, you can go in and you can look for apps and if you're not finding what you want, you can actually say, show me iPhone apps. [00:11:50] Darin Newbold: Right. [00:11:50] Joshua Warren: that's how the Vision Pro App Store works. It looks just like the normal app store. It defaults though, to only showing you vision apps. Right. And then you can actually toggle over and say, okay, show me iPhone and iPad apps. [00:12:03] Darin Newbold: So out of all of this, you started to, you kind of hinted on it when you were talking about some of the checkouts, but. [00:12:10] What are some things that our listeners even, they weigh early on, and if they're already planning some upgrades and, and updates to their site, what are some things they need to be looking out for for these, uh, e-commerce site improvements? [00:12:23] Joshua Warren: Yeah, so be careful with what I call cute checkouts. Uh, Nordstrom has a cute checkout in that their credit card field tries to be smart and it tries to look cool, and it tries to show you the logo of the card type that you've entered. But what happens is if you mistype, say you're using your eyes to select the numbers, and you mistype one number in the middle of the card, and you don't realize till you've typed in all the numbers. [00:12:45] It's basically impossible to correct just that one number you have to get in there and erase the entire credit card number and start over. you know, if it wasn't such an expensive device, I probably would've thrown it across the room at that, but, [00:12:57] Darin Newbold: Well, and that's definitely gonna cost someone not to. I mean, that's a quick abandon the card. Hey, I can go find this somewhere else, or I really don't need it. Or I'll go to my computer and do it where it's much, much easier. [00:13:08] What else? Uh, what else do you find? [00:13:10] Joshua Warren: So in general, kind of related to that, make sure your site supports and allows auto-filling for some reason. I know there's some sites that got into their heads that they wanted to disable the ability to auto-fill Vision. [00:13:21] Pro users are gonna be auto-filling as much as they can, and so you really need to allow that. Um, the other thing is reduce the number of selectable elements on the page. Kinda like what I was talking about with Amazon, that is a weird thing to optimize for. The closest I've ever looked at that before is accessibility. [00:13:39] And if you go back to our Neurodiverse episode, You know, you can overwhelm users with having too many selectable elements on the Vision Pro. That's like, [00:13:47] Darin Newbold: you're overwhelmed almost [00:13:48] instantly. [00:13:49] Joshua Warren: Yeah. So definitely, decide how many selectable elements you really need on the page. Make sure they're sized. [00:13:56] well honestly, Follow accessibility and mobile best practices. That's really what it comes down to is if you're following those best practices, you know, you're making sure your menu elements aren't too small, they're um, not too close together, just all that stuff, you're also gonna end up providing a better XR experience on the Vision Pro. [00:14:13] Darin Newbold: Interesting, interesting interest. This is so exciting. This is cutting edge, if you will. So, alright, closing this up. We'll land the plane on the Vision Pro here. What, uh, what's kinda your last and final thoughts as we, as we explore the brave new world? [00:14:29] Joshua Warren: Yeah, I think that, um, this is gonna evolve very quickly. [00:14:32] Um, that new version coming this summer that I will be installing the first developer beta of and probably regretting it, hopefully not bricking the device. Um, I. Third-party developers and Apple are already shipping updates, new apps. More and more apps every day are, um, becoming available for it. Just stay tuned. [00:14:50] Um, I'm putting out as much content as I can on my personal LinkedIn profile. We'll link in the, the show notes to that. But, uh, stay tuned because this is gonna evolve very quickly. Um, it doesn't, it may not feel like that to a lot of retailers, but 5 10 years from now, we're gonna look back. AND We're gonna be like, this is just like when the iPhone launched. [00:15:08] This is just like when the iPad launched. People at the time were like, oh, I don't know. Is this really gonna be the next big thing? And then the people that really got on it early adapted to it, they're the ones that made all the money. [00:15:19] Darin Newbold: It's interesting, and I, I couldn't agree with you more. [00:15:22] This is the, the wild west of the iPhone, the iPad and, and that whole, whole market and bringing it through. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we really appreciate you jumping in here with Commerce today and, and hearing our kind of first results and bringing out the vision Pro. What it looks like as far as an e-commerce experience, our initial impressions and all of those things, we look forward to you subscribing to our channel and would love to get your comments and your, if you have one and you have experiences, definitely uh, hit us up. [00:15:54] We want to hear and see about what your experiences are and what you're finding, [00:15:57] Joshua Warren: And that reminds me of one last thing I wanted to tell people. I made this call on LinkedIn. I'll make it here as well. If you have a website, e-commerce website and you don't have a Vision Pro and you're curious, hey, how does our site shape up on the Vision Pro? [00:16:11] shoot me a note on LinkedIn and I'm more than happy to go out and record a video of me testing out your site on the Vision Pro. [00:16:17] Darin Newbold: That is awesome. So definitely take advantage of that. And as always, we appreciate you being here. And with that, we'll call it a wrap. Take care. Have a great day.