How to choose an AI visualiser for your product range
A guide for product brands, manufacturers and merchants.
By Anthony Wei, Founder & CEO
An AI visualiser is a designer in a web page: from a photo or a plan of the customer’s own home, it places your real products, shows them installed, adds every matching product and hands back a complete design, on the photo or in 3D (more on what that means). Here is what to check before you choose one. We design, build and operate AI visualisers for building-product brands, so these are the checks we hold ourselves to.
Nine checks before you choose
- Does it design, or does the customer? Give it a photo of a real home. A real AI visualiser returns a complete design: your products in the right places, installed, with the matching products added. If the customer has to assemble it by hand, it’s a configurator.
- Your range, not a demo catalogue. Ask to see it on your products, colours and profiles, and ask how quickly a new colour goes live.
- The matching products. Trims, gutters, flashings, accessories: does it add them, the way a designer would?
- Change one thing, keep the rest. The customer should be able to change the roof without losing the walls.
- Photo and 3D. Can it design on the customer’s photo and also model the customer’s space in 3D from photos or drawings, in real time, without anyone modelling by hand? In 3D, can it do everything a configurator does, and produce shop drawings and professional drawings?
- Your own projects. Test it on photos of jobs you’ve sold, including the difficult ones.
- Where the design goes. Sample requests, enquiries to your team, builders, stockists: every design should become a lead.
- What you can see. Where customers come from, what they design and which designs turn into enquiries.
- Who runs it. A visualiser is a live product. Choose a team that builds it and operates it after launch, keeps your range current and answers when something needs fixing.
Comparing costs
Compare the build with what it costs to run: hosting, support, range updates and improvements. Ask whether 3D models of your products are included, and whether you can use them elsewhere. A cheaper build that nobody keeps current costs more in lost sales.
When you don’t need one
If your products aren’t chosen by how they look, if a trade specifies them without the customer choosing a finish, or if your range has very few visible options, clear product pages and fast access to your team may be enough.
Frequently asked questions
How do we test a visualiser before committing?
Give it photos of your own recent projects and see whether it designs them the way your best salesperson or designer would.
Can it run on our existing website?
Yes. It can sit inside a page on your website or run on its own domain, in your brand.
Who keeps the range current?
With a built-and-operated visualiser, the team that runs it does.