#636 - Put 3D Images on Amazon for Free!
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Today, we've got a couple of representatives from Amazon on the show who work in a department that has now made it available for all sellers to quickly produce and upload 3D renderings of your products. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

And we've got a couple Amazonians on the call now and for the very first time on this show. And like we always do with first time guests, it's like, you know, kind of structure. This is if we just run in at Amazon, run into each other at Amazon, accelerate or something. So let's go ahead and just get some some background on our two guests today. Let's first start with Leon. Where are you at right now?

Thanks, Bradley. I'm Leon Seven, product manager and digital innovation team at Amazon. I work on tools that are based on science and machine learning to help in 3D to help create new 3D experiences and help automate and reduce costs for 3D asset creation. And you're in New York or Seattle?

- I'm in New York. - And one of you is in one place and one's in another place, New York. Accent makes me feel like you've been there for a while. - I've been in New York a little over 10 years. I guess that makes it a while, right? - Okay, and then where were you born and raised? - I was actually originally born in Belarus. - Belarus.

- Yeah, I came to the States about 25 years ago. Been here a long time. - Okay, all right. Where'd you go to college at? - I went to Carnegie Mellon University for undergrad and Ohio State for my masters. - Aren't you supposed to say the Ohio State? Isn't that the way it works? - You are right. It's true, it's true. - Okay, all right, cool, cool. Now we got Chris, and so I guess you're in Seattle then? - Yeah, thanks Bradley. I'm in Seattle. Leon and I, we're on totally opposite ends of the country, but we work together pretty closely.

I manage tools within our visual innovation program for 3D management of your files. So I help sellers figure out how to create their files, who they can talk to to create them, and then build the tools that let them upload and manage them on their detail pages. Are you a boarder raiser? No, I've been in Seattle about 10 years.

I was born and raised on the East Coast, New Jersey and Virginia. Lived a bunch of places in between, but yeah, been here about 10 years. And where did you go to school at? Yeah, I did my undergrad in Ohio at Case Western Reserve University, and I got my master's from University of Utah. All right, now this is good timing that we're getting together right now because just a few weeks ago, there was just an announcement on Amazon that talked about, hey, no more 360 degree videos.

images. Now, did you guys have anything to do with that department that that managed those 360 360 degree images at all? We we work pretty closely with with the team that manages the 360 spin models. But it's important to know that 3D models are a bit different from from the 360 spin files. When you're looking at a 360 spin file, it's just a sequence of 2D photos that are arranged so that as you cycle through them, it looks like you're actually looking

looking at something that's spinning around, but you're really just seeing a sequence of photos. What's great about 3D models is it's fully interactive. You can spin it any way you want, so it's not just the one plane that they took the 360 photos for. And also,

It lets you get into more experiences like augmented reality and other things. And so what we're really trying to do is up level that customer experience. And so the new 3D customer experiences, if you in 3D view in your room, virtual try on there, they're starting to supersede what that 360 spin experience used to do for customers. And I imagine that

I'm not sure we haven't really gone over everything that we're going to talk about today or anything that we're going to talk about today. But I think the whole reason why you guys wanted to be on this show is because that sellers are actually going to have some control over it.

I had one on a couple of my coffin shelves, but I didn't put it there. It was just Amazon randomly choosing my product and choosing to do it. And a lot of sellers were like, yeah, that would be cool, but they really had no control over that. So I'm hoping that's what we're going to be getting into today, that sellers with these 3D images are going to be able to have a little bit more control over what is and isn't on their products. Now, just in general, going back to Leon, you know, like,

um, you know, uh, you know, cause talked about it a little bit, but why should three, uh, why should sellers be, be interested in this? Because I, like I said, you know, hardly anybody had control over their, their 360 images, but for 3d, um, why, why is this something that you're wanting to, to put on, uh,

sellers and brands radars? Sellers should care about 3D because it helps customers make a more informed, educated, and a better purchase decision. When a customer sees a 3D experience, they can visualize the product in a way that they couldn't do before and really see it from all sides and angles, see it digitally in augmented reality, in their environment, and even on themselves. And that helps

ensure that what they see online meets the expectations of what they see on their doorstep when their shipment arrives. So when customers make a more informed and happier, more confident purchase decision, ultimately that results in a happier customer, which ends up resulting in a happier seller. All right. So, you know, something I like to do

But regardless of the subject, instead of just talking about something, I want to get people excited to let them know, kind of illustrate why it's important, why we're even talking about it. So I believe or I hope you guys might have some stats or something about on how having these 3D images actually can add to somebody's reach out there or somebody's sales, etc. What can you tell us about some real life examples maybe?

Yeah, we've done some measurements across the catalog to see how 3D is performing. And what we found is when customers are using augmented reality or 3D experiences in the shopping journey, we found a roughly one and a half to three and a half times higher conversion rate than on products that don't have 3D at all.

So we're really excited that the customers who get to use 3D and they're trying out like the virtual try on for the eyewear or the shoes or the augmented reality in your room, it gives them a much better sense of what this product is and how it fits.

And then not only the higher conversion rates, we've also seen a reduction in returns when you're using view in your room. So we've seen a 20% reduction in return rates due to style reasons when the customers are using view in your room in the shopping journey.

And then we've seen several other studies that have come from outside of Amazon. You can probably find them online. They show similar data. It's showing customers have responded pretty well in surveys to how they like the 3D shopping experience. And then also that it helps lead them to making a purchase. Let's just take it to the basics. Now people know, hey, this actually can have a positive effect on your Amazon sales. What

a 3D image. You know, like we talked a little bit about the difference between 3D and 360, but take it back even further about the basics of what exactly a 3D image is.

in the context of what we're talking about in Amazon listing. I talked a little bit about how a 3D model isn't a sequence of photos like the 360 spins were. So what you have with a 3D model, and there are many different file types available out there in the industry, but basically when you think of like a CGI movie, a Pixar movie or something, you're seeing a bunch of different 3D models and those models are being animated. But at the base level, it's very similar to what's showing on Amazon. You have

you have this shape that's modeled. It's like a, it's a geometry of, of the product. And then we have to overlay the textures. So, so the colors and, and the, you know,

We have a bunch of ways of modeling how light will reflect differently. So not only will you see the color of the product, but you'll see reflectivity, you'll see surface roughness modeled to get that realism. Alright, so for those watching on YouTube, let's go ahead and throw up a screen share from your computer and take a look at what you're talking about. Okay, so what are we looking at here?

Yeah, so right here you're looking at and this is what a 3D artist would see basically in their modeling software. So you see on the right, this is the wireframe mesh. It's how you would view the shape of the product. So with a 3D model, you can generate it several different ways. You can have somebody build this thing from scratch in the modeling software, starting with shapes, extruding the shapes, pulling them out, doing all sorts of modifications to get the ultimate shape of your product.

Or you can start with basically some software we call photogrammetry, which would stitch a bunch of different photos together to create a geometry here. But on the left, you're seeing the wireframe filled in a little bit. And so what happens in order to go from this wireframe of the shape of the product to the 3D model you see,

we have to overlay textures. And so here now you're seeing a chair with the different textures involved. And on the right, you kind of see what these texture files look like.

So there's actually somebody who's taking images of what the textures or creating the images of what the textures and colors would be and mapping, for instance, the seat fabric, mapping that out to where that corresponds to the geometry of the chair. And same with this red material here that's going on the sides.

And then ultimately that'll show up like this, the final product. Now you've added lighting, you can see the shadows, you can see how the light interacts with the product and you get a really realistic output basically from combining the geometry with the textures on top. All right. Well, I hope we're going to be talking about things

things that you've made easier because I can't even draw a stick figure, let alone think about developing textures. And, and, you know, I know those who are just listening to the podcast might not be able to see this, but there's some pretty complex imagery there, but that that's, that's, uh,

I could definitely see how that would be superior to using just the 360 images where it's just a whole bunch of images. Actually, I didn't really like the one that was on my coffin shelf. It was kind of cool that I had it, but then I was like, it actually didn't show the correct depth and it just looked a little bit warped and

and stuff like that. So I'm thinking this is going to be a little bit better. How long has this been around? Like with anything at Amazon, I know you guys beta test on some listings and things like that. When did the first 3D images start to get on detail pages out there? Yeah, the earliest incarnation of our 3D actually started back in 2017.

It was our augmented reality, basically what became view in your room and allowed you, we started off with chairs just like I showed. So that was really where we began this journey. And so since then it's grown. We've, within the last two or three years, we've really started expanding where these 3D CXs, the customer experiences are available. So now it's much larger than chairs. It's bigger.

We also have the augmented reality. I think we'll do some demos here later for virtual try on for eyewear. You can see it on your face, virtual try on for shoes so you can see what the shoes would look like on your feet. We've got the view in your room. It's expanded beyond chairs to basically anything that'll sit on the floor or a table or against the wall.

And then we just have a basic view in 3D viewer, which is superseding that old 360 experience where you can rotate it now in any direction. You can zoom in to really inspect those details. Okay. We talked about a little bit what it is and the history and then how, you know, the origin of how you start with 3D in some aspects. But what are customers actually seeing? Do you guys have any demos that we can share so that we can see how it looks in the actual Amazon market, you know, the actual Amazon storefront or product page?

listing. Okay. So there's a couple of ways to find our 3D tools. And the first one is you can see if product have 3D experiences directly from the search screen. So for example, here you can see in the bottom right, there's this icon that looks like a little bit like a cube. So that tells customers that this particular product has a 3D experience.

So here I'm going to go into this detail page on this listing. And here there's a couple of ways to see 3D experiences. So the first is view in 3D, which is a button down here below. And I go into this and this is where I can see the product from all sides and angles. So you can see it loads it. It gives instruction for how to interact. And now I can spin it around. I can look at the top and at the bottom. I can zoom in and zoom out and really understand what this product looks like from angles that may not have images or videos to cover it.

So this is the view in 3D experience. So the next experience is view in your room where in the second slot, you can see I swiped and this tells a customer how to enter view in your room. I click on that and here it's telling me to find a place in my room and now I tapped a place and now this is in our office and you can see

Here's the chair that I just looked at. And in this experience, in my own environment, I can move it around. I can spin it. It can really see how does it fit in my room size, decor, things like that. You know, really helpful with furniture and other things around the house to show how it fits and behaves in my own environment.

And then another experience is what we call virtual try-on. So I'll find, for example, this eyewear ASIN. And here I can open it and you can see a virtual try-on bottom here in the bottom left.

And now it's going to open it up. And now you can see, I can see what this glasses will look like on me. And I can see from the sides and the front. It's like a me, it's like that meme. I forgot what it's called. There's like a meme with the sunglasses. I just came to my head. So do I like the looks? It's size and fit accurate. Really helps me understand how would this look like on my face, even though it's digital. So,

Obviously, furniture would be the view in your room. Obviously, sunglasses is the virtual try on. What else qualifies for like virtual try on? Like other clothing or is it like just accessories or what? For virtual try on, currently we have eyewear and shoes. So I didn't show the shoes experience, but we can find one like that too. And then we're continuously working on new experiences and new product types that we're developing.

- Okay, now is that what you got, you know, you guys referred to it earlier, like the augmented reality and virtual reality, or are those separate things as well? - So these are both View in Your Room and the Virtual Try-On are augmented reality experiences. We currently don't have any virtual reality experience on Amazon. So these AR ones are the ones to help with your own environment and digitally on yourself.

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Now, obviously, in your app there, you know, you being in New York, you're showing Amazon USA, you know, section of Amazon. But, you know, we have listeners worldwide. So what about customers in Spain when they're looking at the Amazon Spain Amazon app? Are they going to have these options as well? Yeah. So if a customer is in Spain, they…

They should be able to access the same 3D models. It really depends if the product has a 3D model and if it's available, that product is available in Spain, then the customer should see really the same options. We're available, these experiences are available in the US, across most of the EU, and then India and Japan as well. Now, I want to take it back a little bit because...

because of your first demo might have scared some people away. Like there is no way that I have the technology or the money to be able to create these models. But, you know, like I think it was at Amazon Accelerator somewhere, you know, they had talked about, no, you're just going to be able to like use your own phone in some situations to do this. So let's start talking about the

hey, I'm excited about what you guys saw. I definitely think that'll help my sales. How can I get started creating this 3D content without having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for professional CAD designers and whatnot? Yeah, well, first, it's never that expensive. So it shouldn't be scary. But we do have solutions to help our sellers,

do this much easier and at no cost. So this is where our mobile scanning tool can come in. And I'll do a demo here and sort of explain the process. But overall, this tool allows our sellers inside the Amazon seller app to just scan their product with their phone by following some simple instructions. And Amazon then uses that scan to create the 3D model and post it on the detail page at no cost to the seller.

So I can demonstrate this process now. It's really as simple as sort of walking around the product. I'll do a short demo. I won't do a full scan, but this is exactly what it looks like. So here you can see this is my phone connected directly to my computer. And this is the Amazon seller app.

This is available in the Amazon vendor app as well, but we'll just look at the seller one. So here I open the seller app. I'm already logged in. I have a test account here. Under listings at the bottom, you can click under listings. And here at the bottom, you see create 3D models. When you enter that tool, this is the place where we explain to you some of the benefits of 3D, some of the experiences that we just showed you, and then how the process works. So we have an instructional tutorial here with a little bit more details on expectations and what the process is like.

And then to actually get started, you can click on "Get Started" and here you'll see sellers will see their catalog and all their listings. This is just an account with test listings. Let's say they want to scan this product. We do a check to ensure that the product is eligible for scanning by making sure that there's a 3D experience on it and the seller is brand registered for this particular item. So in this case, it's a yes to all and the button is orange.

And now I'm gonna click start scan. This just shows this is the right product to scan. Obviously this is just a test, so. - Yeah, yeah. - And now you're gonna see, and I'm gonna actually do, I'm gonna stand up and do a scan of this item right here. So it's helping me to just point at the item and hit start. It identifies the object and you can see it finds exactly what the item is. And then I'm gonna click, and you can resize the box if it's not right or reset it. And I'm gonna click start capture. And now it just says move slowly around the object.

And this is what the scan process is like. You can see it's starting to fill in these dots. So this has taken automatic pictures of the item.

And all it takes is for you to walk around the product in a couple of minutes. As little as two to three minutes, depending on how long and how good you are. So I can't keep going because my cord is too short on my laptop, so I'll go the other way. And then you can see it's filling in the details. It's starting to move slower. And you can see how the bottom circles are filling in. I feel like we're in some futuristic movie right now. That's it. That's ridiculous. So this is the process. And you end up walking around the product and doing this about three times.

And again, the whole thing can take as little as two minutes, which we've seen. Once you sort of get the hang of it, there's also different capture experiences for different phones. Once you completed a scan, you can go to the screen called My 3D Models to see what you have in progress, completed, or something that couldn't be modeled. So for something that was completed, you can see that here. And then once it was successfully modeled, I can literally go and click on View on Amazon to go and see the 3D model on my listing directly. Cool.

Quick question here just came to my mind as I was watching you do that. That was obviously one product. Now, I've got a product where it's not like a bundle per se, but I guess you can kind of say it is where there's like a coffin shelf and then I have like a coffin gift box and it ships to the customer together. It's not a virtual bundle or anything. Would I put both of those things side by side and would it detect that I have two images and do that whole process of walking around it and everything? Or I can only do one of the – I have to choose one of those for the actual 3D? Yeah.

Yeah. So currently the tool is built to do really just one item. And our 3D experiences are also primarily showing one main product for the ASIN. So in this example, for example, you have the main shelf and then you said you have like a gift box. You know, we recommend to scan the main shelf because that's really the core of the product and the other details customers can see in the images and other stuff that you have on the detail page. But we recommend to scan the main item of the listing.

All right. So then I scanned the whole thing. Uh, it finishes now. Um, I'm still in the seller central app there. I I'm, I'm assuming there's a button that says publish or whatever. So once I, once I do that, how long does it actually take for the, you know, to, to be live on the detail page? So once you complete the scan, there's actually nothing else you have to do. Uh, we take care of the rest and all that complexity. Um,

The average time is about two weeks or so. We say it can take up to four weeks. We've seen it take as fast as two days. So it really depends on the complexity on the item and some other steps along the way in sort of our processes. But, you know, roughly two weeks is the average time between when you complete the scan and when the 3D model is published to one of the experiences on your listing. And

You know, during this time, is there is there like a page where I can go see, hey, you know, what's the status or as opposed to just like refreshing my listing every day? Yeah. So I showed briefly the my 3D models page. That's the best place to see the status there. So when it is being modeled, it would be in the in progress status. And then when it's complete, that would turn move to the complete status. So that's the best place to find the updates.

And then this file, once it's done, does it only live on Amazon? Is it possible for me to download this 3D file for my own use at all? So currently, no, you're not able to download it for your own use. It currently only lives on Amazon. We do have tools that can help you get the file yourself, working with some content providers. And Chris can talk more about that.

And it looked like, I'm assuming you have an iPhone there? I do. That you're using? All right. So obviously it works with iOS. If I have an Android or other device or even iPad, what's the device limitation as far as what I can use to actually use the scanning feature? The scanning tool currently is available only for iOS devices. So iPhones and iPads work as well. The 3D model that's published,

to the experience that we showed, that's shown to both Android and iOS, and in some cases even on desktop. But the actual scanning tool itself is currently available on iOS only. And we have two different experiences. The one I showed you is available for any iPhone with the Pro or Pro Max version. It uses a LiDAR sensor in your iPhone. Then there's a slightly different experience, although the process is generally the same, for any phone that's not a Pro or Pro Max version.

I personally have my own warehouse behind my house. And so all of my Amazon products are right here. I can just literally walk out my door right now and go scan everything. But for those, maybe they're launching a new product

they don't have it yet, but they want to launch from day one with their 3D image or maybe for whatever reason they're living on the island of Maldives and they just use FBA for all of their stuff and they can't just readily go like you did there on your tabletop and scan. What are those options if I don't actually have the product on hand?

Yeah, so this is where we've made it a lot easier for somebody who can't scan and they also got confused. You know, just like you were saying, hey, it looks really complex. I would have no idea how to make that mesh there and put the textures on. Well, you don't need to worry about it. So we've just within the last few months, we've launched this certification program for 3D agencies that can create these 3D models for you.

And so on the service provider network within Seller Central, when you look under the imaging, the imaging tab and you look for providers for 3D models, then you can see a list of certified content creators and they make it really easy. All you really need to do is send them a few photos of the product and they can just be like pictures from your cell phone or something, as long as it shows the front, the back, the sides, the top, bottom.

And they can go into their modeling software and if they know the dimensions, it's really easy to create those 3D models that look realistic. And that's how historically a lot of the industry has worked and created these models.

So, yeah, you can pretty easily just go on Service Provider Network, look for somebody who can create these things. And then, you know, a lot of them will work with you to create some samples and make sure you like it. But they're all certified to meet our technical compatibility requirements and visual quality requirements too. Now, in my early days, long before I worked here at Helium 10, I worked for this company that

did cell phone cases. And to do cell phone cases, you actually had to do 3D models for everything. That was how we created them in the first place. So companies like that, maybe we already have our own 3D models already. Is that like an acceptable file upload that I can do where instead of having to do this one, I'm like, no, I just want to upload my 3D models I already have from my own website or from my own archive. Is there a place I can do that in Seller Central now?

Yeah, in Seller Central, we have an upload tool. It's within Image Manager. The way you would get there is by going to the catalog menu and then upload images. And if you're the brand owner for your product, you select a product on the left, and it'll give you the option to either upload images, videos, or 3D models. And then you can click that 3D model tab, and it'll upload images.

You know, you'll be able to upload either a GLB or GLTF file. And so one of the problems you might run into, just like you were saying, hey, people are doing product design with 3D and with CAD. Well, it's probably not in the same format we would need, but it's not impossible to get there. So you would need whoever created that file to export it and check our help page product 3D model.

requirements on Seller Central and then make sure that it's exported to meet all the configurations there. Now, I would imagine that...

I can't just go on other people's listings and start uploading random 3D images. But other than that, is there any other gating that this has? Like, for example, is this only for brand registered sellers or pretty much anybody who has created their own listing? Even if I don't have a brand, I can upload these 3D images. You have to be brand registered and you have to be brand registered for the ASIN you're trying to upload for. How widespread is this now? Is this something that literally I and my

entire brand register catalog can upload everything or is this a slow rollout or is this available to all sellers already? Yeah, the gating is really just you have to be in brand registry and you have to be registered for that ASIN. And then otherwise, you should be able to see it in Seller Central and upload a GLB or GLTF free product.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, guys, you heard it. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably have access to it. So you guys have some homework to do, especially those of you with bigger catalogs out there. I'm definitely going to do this myself too. Okay, so I'm here in the regular Desktop Seller Central app, and then you guys sent me

something here for one of my coffin shelves. So where, if I'm just in the regular app here, or not app, but actual desktop, where do I go to upload this file? Go to that top, the hamburger menu at the top left, and look under catalog, and then go into upload images. Okay. And then from there, at the top left, click image manager. And this should open up this screen where you can see a catalog of all your products. And then...

If your brand registered for any product that you select, you should be able to see a 3D tab on the right next to images and video. Yeah, you click on that 3D models tab and we're going to ask you for basically two things. Here you can click upload 3D model. If you click find content creator, it should take you into the service provider network. Okay. Yeah. Upload 3D model. But if you click upload 3D model, here we're going to ask...

We ask for dimensions of the product just because oftentimes the 3D model may not be configured the same way that you've put the dimensions into the listing. For instance, a laptop could be open in the 3D model and then it becomes much taller than it would be closed.

So we ask for those dimensions here. We ultimately just measure the total three dimensions of the... We draw basically a rectangular prism around a 3D model, and then we measure each of those dimensions. And GLB, it says. Yeah, you have a GLB, so you should be able to just click Upload File and select it. Okay, there it is. Now it looks like it's uploading now. I hit Next. Ooh la la, look at that.

And so here, before you finally submit, we give you a chance to preview the 3D model. You can spin it around just like you're doing. And if it looks good to you and it's passed all of our compatibility checks, which it looks like yours did, otherwise you'd be seeing some errors right now. Yeah, you can click Submit.

And then that's it. We tell you it's submitted for review and there is a quality review process that might take a few days afterwards, but then you should be seeing it on the detail page later. That one button you can put down. That was easy. So, okay. All right. I like it. All right. So guys, this is as easy as it can get. So yeah,

So, you know, I'd like to hear stories of everybody who this week after hearing this episode are out uploading these 3D images and then, you know, it might take a little bit to actually get live. But I'd love to, you know, check in Helium 10, guys, your business reports that are coming from Amazon as far as like your, you know, your conversion rates and look at your search query performance and all these data points that you have to kind of see what effect. And you should hopefully start seeing the effect on your conversion rate and, you

And, you know, we don't have things like yet that Amazon gives us that tells us how long people stay in the page and stuff. But you can pretty much assume that this is probably going to help with that as well because, you know, people are going to start, you know, putting my coffin shelf on their wall and see – or like seeing how it looks in the room and stuff like that. So this is pretty cool. I really – the biggest thing, I think the biggest takeaway is –

is that unlike before with the 360 images, you know, we have control over this. So like we literally can do this on our entire catalog, which is great. You know, everybody always saw the coffin shelf and those 360 images. How do I get that? I'm sorry. I can't help you. You just got to cross your fingers that Amazon chooses you. But so that this is really great. Well, you know, Leon and Chris, thank you so much for coming on here and giving this demo and, and, and,

bringing this technology, you know, being part of the team that brings this technology to Amazon sellers worldwide. Look forward to maybe having you guys on in the future if you guys have any other cool updates to this program or other programs that you guys might work on. Thanks for having us.