By Marc Foreman, co-CEO of Buzz 3D
Here’s a question: when we shop online, why doesn’t it feel like “going shopping”?
We’ve spent three decades upgrading retail technology, yet the digital storefront has barely evolved. For most retailers, the online experience is still a flat page of thumbnails, filters and search bars – the “product grid”.
Functional? Yes. Inspiring? Nowhere near
This matters because the UK FMCG retail landscape is shifting fast and in the midst of biting inflation and tighter household budgets, lower consumer loyalty and increasing expectations for frictionless shopping, each online shopping experience across the retail spectrum looks and feels the same. Despite this, many retailers continue to cling to the product grid as the backbone of their online service, ignoring the stark reality that although eCommerce has grown over the years, it is completely eclipsed by basket values for real-world shopping.
In effect, the product grid has become a standard because it works, not because it works well.
It delivers smaller baskets than in-store, is geared for speed not pleasure, and is designed to get shoppers quickly to whatever they’re looking for – assuming they already know what that is.
We’ve all simply become used to how broken that model actually is.
So why hang on to a paradigm that quietly suppresses eCommerce performance, designed for an internet ecosystem that has long since disappeared?
We’re at an inflection point, and it’s time to step back and reassess whether today’s online shopper experience is still fit for purpose.
Aren’t shoppers inspired when they shop online?
No – and the data increasingly reflects this.
Recent behavioural studies show that online grocery and FMCG baskets tend to be less varied and contain fewer incremental or impulse items than their in-store equivalents.
A 2023 multi-retailer study by Cornell University comparing online and in-store shopping within the same households found clear signs of reduced browsing, reduced discovery, and fewer spontaneous additions. The study noted that “traditional in-store promotional strategies, like product displays and samples for product discovery, don’t translate seamlessly to online settings” (INFORMS 2023).
Zoom out further and a similar trend appears at the shopper-level. Multiple consumer studies report overall monthly in-store spend remains higher than digital for the majority of households. Shoppers buy more broadly and more generously in-store, driven by the sensory and behavioural cues the digital grid strips away.
And yet millions are still poured into incremental refinements of the eCommerce “experience”, without ever addressing this major shortcoming.
It’s not all about product recommendations & page-load times
For years, online retail innovation has focused on speed and convenience. But according to these studies, in-store sales don’t outperform eCommerce simply because products are available; they happen because shelf design, placement and environment make shopping feel natural, intuitive and engaging in a way a web page can’t replicate.
That’s why there’s a yawning gap between what shoppers expect and the rinse-and-repeat journey they face online.
And overwhelmingly, retailers are stuck in the ‘grid trap’ – legacy systems with roots firmly entrenched in an internet era that no longer exists.
In-store layouts aren’t accidental. They’re engineered. Pasta and sauce go together for a reason. Bread goes with spreads. High-margin goods are at eye level. Colour blocking, signage, and shopper-flow mapping all create momentum – helping people browse, notice, and buy more. Of course physical stores outperform eCommerce. How could they not?
So, the question for ambitious retailers is: Why accept an online store that performs any less effectively than your physical one?
You shouldn’t. And for the first time, you don’t have to.
There are now practical ways to bring in-store logic (shelf setup, product placement, messaging and store-journey cues) into the eCommerce environment. Better still, it can all integrate with the legacy systems retailers already use.
Welcome to immersive commerce. What it is (and isn’t)
Let’s be clear: we’re not talking about the ‘metaverse’ – no headsets, holograms or avatars. Immersive commerce is far simpler and more powerful. It’s about recreating store logic online: the shelves, visual hierarchy, category flow and environmental cues that help shoppers navigate.
And crucially, the technology to address this exists today.
At Buzz 3D, our ‘bread and butter’ work is producing 3D shelves for online shopper testing – trusted by hundreds of brands worldwide to deliver shopper behaviour that’s 92% aligned with expected real-world behaviour. And what happens to these shelves once shoppers prove they work?
They go straight into your favourite supermarket.
So why not use them online too? Not for shopper-testing, but for actual shoppers!?
From scrolling a page to ‘opening a door’
Picture this: A shopper visits your website, pushes a button and gets an aisle instead of a grid. They can scan the full shelf, pick up products and compare options naturally. They see promotions the way you intended. They experience adjacencies as they would in your physical stores.
Without even thinking about it, their basket value increases because the digital space finally mirrors the physical, stimulating the same purchase decision-making processes they adopt when they get there.
Why retailers should be thinking about this now
There are strong commercial reasons to leverage this tech. It has the potential to:
- Give margin-generating brands the visibility that’s been lacking in the grid format
- Lift conversion rates through improved visual cues
- Drive cross-sell naturally through layout, not algorithms
- Create greater customer loyalty
- Fully integrate physical and digital strategies to improve cost and stock management efficiencies
- Even personalise the online store for each shopper
It’s an evolution that doesn’t require ripping out infrastructure or adopting experimental tech. It builds on what retailers already use today – planograms, digital shelf simulations, behavioural data – and links it directly to the customer journey.
A challenge – and an invitation
Adapting the tech Buzz 3D has created for research and using it to power full-on, immersive eCommerce is a far smaller step than many expect.
But at some point, retailers will have to make that leap. They’ll need to ask how much longer they can keep ringfencing an online experience born in the 90s, and how many more millions they’re willing to pour into the back end for a marginal uplift. All while their own research teams already see how effective a shoppable, shelf-based experience can be.
We are standing at the threshold of an opportunity to stop treating online shopping as a catalogue, and start treating it as an experience – a space where discovery, emotion and retail science work together, just like in the physical world.
It’s time eCommerce stepped into the future.
We’re building that future today, and would love to hear what you think. And if you’re curious about how we can transform your online retail, check out our free interactive shelf demo or get in touch to explore what’s possible for you and your online retail.
- Email: sales@buzz3d.com
- Web address: https://www.web.buzz3d.com/
