The metaverse is not just a futuristic concept but a present day opportunity brimming with potential. Despite a rather dormant outlook in the metaverse domain, entrepreneurs do have a unique chance to carve out profitable niches.
After all, if you consider the rising sales of virtual reality (VR) headsets, it indicates that there is a sizeable number of consumers who are interested in VR. Most of the consumers are probably gamers, which actually means there is an existing market that is ready to accept new product offerings. Entrepreneurs thus just need to tap into this tech opportunity to offer appealing products.
Despite some flops with some Metaverse products, there are a handful of metaverse gaming platforms that managed to attract a fairly steady stream of gaming enthusiasts. There are also some activities going on in Social VR, with Rec Room and ChatVR being two of the more popular platforms. If you are interested to gain some insight, there is a 2021 survey about how users utilize Social VR platforms.
These pockets of metaverse platforms here and there indicate that this space holds much potential to expand. Thus, we will explore some of the opportunities in more detail apart from the gaming and social media sectors:
Immersive Shopping Experiences In Metaverse
The VR/AR metaverse offers many opportunities to enhance the online shopping experiences of consumers.
It seems like the e-commerce industry is proving to be quite resilient against economic slowdowns as we had witnessed during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic. Thus, the retail sector could be very attractive to entrepreneurs seeking longevity of projects.
Between Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), the latter seems to be gaining more traction. AR combined with the prowess of artificial intelligence is now steadily being integrated into shopping websites.
One of AR’s key advantages is, it is a technology that is more accessible to consumers. Customers can utilize AR directly with their smartphones provided there is a compatible app. VR on the other hand, requires purchasing a separate device.
You may have already noticed clothing and furniture retailers utilizing AR to attract more attention to their offerings. Surely, we will eventually see more of AR being used for other products too. Therefore, this is the perfect time to explore opportunities in this space.
Enhanced Online Shopping Experience with AR or VR
As we see more usage of AR or VR in the market, consumers will come to appreciate the 360 view of 3D visualizations. Being able to get a more thorough view of the product will surely help consumers make more informed purchasing decisions.
By having AR integrated into shopping websites, it will help reduce the uncertainty that often accompanies with online shopping. As a result, this could lead to a reduction in product returns and thus, will be a win-win situation for the sellers and customers.
Once consumers are more accustomed to utilizing AR in their daily life, we may then see more non-gaming consumers picking up VR devices. For example, some companies in the real estate and tourism industries are already utilizing VR to give their customers a more realistic view and experience of their product offerings.
Shopping for cars is also another viable sector that could greatly benefit from AR or VR technologies. Just imagine how excited prospective car buyers will be if we can provide them with a more thorough and immersive 360 degree virtual view of the car. For customers who are loyal to a particular brand, they may not even need to see the actual car to make a booking.
Audi E-Tron Virtual Showroom
Video by WOOW Studio
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Metaverse Business Opportunities For Today’s Market
Immersive Learning Experiences In Metaverse
If you look around for metaverse projects, you might come across some entrepreneurial ventures that have built virtual classrooms and colleges. However, I’d say the traffic around these virtual spaces are nowhere near its physical counterpart.
The lackluster response from students is likely due to a lack of interesting activities in these virtual spaces. This is not a surprising outcome since students use virtual spaces to engage in highly interactive activities. It is thus rather pointless to virtually replicate a college campus with amazing views but with nothing exciting to do.
Metaverse Experiences To Generate Higher Student Satisfaction
For many young men and women around the world, one of the major milestones in life is to graduate from a college or university. For education institutions, the recruitment of students is an annual major affair that they are willing to invest vast amount of resources.
In recent years, more emphasis have been given to improving student satisfaction because the students are getting very vocal with their opinions online. After all, the alumni are the ambassadors of the college or university that they graduate from. This means the education institutions will obviously greatly benefit if they retain a high student satisfaction.
Just one example of a use case for VR in the education sector could be an app that accurately simulate the actual nature of the job. A combination of real-world 360 videos and realistic computer graphics will create a highly immersive and realistic environment. Such an app may even serve as an effective student recruitment tool before the student even enters the classroom.
Reducing dropout rates from courses and internships because the students change their minds will ultimately benefit the education institutions, their students as well as the companies that employ interns.
VR Corporate Training
You will be glad to know that tech giants such as Meta and Microsoft are continuing to show interest in advancing the metaverse. However, the reality is, the average office worker is not strapping a VR headset to their face. On the other hand, we see some surveys stating that corporations are indicating an overall growing interest in virtual reality.
If you ignore corporate blunders like what we have seen with Meta’s Horizon Worlds, the responses are generally positive for the adoption of VR metaverse. So, it seems like the market just have not yet produce a product that employees will welcome with open arms.
Just like how Zoom and Slack have become integral tools at workplaces, likewise, virtual reality and metaverse also hold similar potentials in the workplace. However, I really don’t think VR metaverse will ever serve as an effective space for virtual meetings and collaborations. Having to strap on a bulky VR headset for work sounds uncomfortable and does not exude professionalism.
So let’s turn our focus to using VR metaverse for job training instead:
Better Customer Service Training and Job Candidate Screening
Despite the anticipated increased usage of AI chatbots, it is not practical to expect a robot to be capable of fully replacing a human worker. Well, at least not at this point of time when artificial intelligence is still somewhat at the experimental stage. So, I’d like to believe that customers with all their pettiness and quirks will still need a human touch to tackle.
Therefore, businesses should be realistic with what they hope to achieve with AI chatbots. The machines can certainly take care of faqs and other mundane tasks, but high-value customers will demand to be served by a real human professional. Hence, it is vital for businesses to employ human agents who are skilled to tactfully handle all types of customers.
This is where virtual reality metaverse can serve as an effective training tool. Why risk putting the reputation of the company at stake by training new employees via a customer facing situation? A small newbie mistake could prove to be detrimental to the company.
Thus, it will be far safer and more effective for the training to be conducted via immersive virtual reality. Such a VR training app can even be utilized as a recruitment tool to better screen potential candidates.
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Metaverse Business Opportunities For Today’s Market
Virtual Reality Events
Since Covid 19 happened, it looks like the trend towards webinars and virtual/online events is set to stay. What we are experiencing now with Zoom or Slack is far from being the ideal virtual communication medium. As a corporate trainer once told me, it felt like he was talking to a brick wall when he is running online training sessions via Zoom.
This is where an untapped opportunity lies and I believe VR metaverse is a feasible solution to adding more “human touch” to online events. As a start, just being more immersed in the events will enable all participants to focus on the happenings within the event without outside distractions.
Are you old enough to remember how Internet cafes were once very popular venues in cities around the world? Well, something similar is starting to sprout now – virtual reality gaming centres. These VR gaming centers certainly hold the potential to draw in a new segment of non-gaming customers. The one thing that is now lacking is high quality non-gaming VR contents. This would change as the VR market evolves to cater to a wider range of customers.
More Engaging and Lively Events With VR Metaverse
In live online interactions, would you prefer to do a virtual handshake or just saying hello through a webcam? Participants who had entered the metaverse before will tell you that virtual interactions feel so much more ‘real’. In addition, introverts may find the metaverse a very comfortable space to interact with others via avatars.
To make the metaverse environment more authentic, you can encourage your users to generate a realistic avatar of themselves via an AI tool. Therefore, we may soon find avatars expanding out of the gaming market and this presents numerous business opportunities.
The market is thus ripe for entrepreneurs to develop well designed metaverse platforms that can host a variety of events and venues. This could be social hangouts, professional networking platforms, 3D movies theatres, concerts, office meetings, etc. As remote working becomes more of a norm, businesses will come to realize that virtual collaborations can be more effective via the metaverse. In the near future, the metaverse could very well play a key role in fostering camaraderie among remote workers.
Social Media
Social media expanded very rapidly on the Web because the tech giants made it very easy for users to upload contents on their platforms. This proliferation of digital contents attracted billions of users to login from all over the world which led to the boom of the e-commerce industry.
As stated in my previous metaverse article, it is not realistic to expect a high volume of users to migrate from current social media platforms to the metaverse. This is partly because, creating 3D contents is much more complex and time consuming than shooting a photo or video.
Hence, the metaverse must serve a different purpose than what Web 2.0 social media is offering. It will be too much to discuss about all the opportunities under this topic, so here is just one product that is missing in the metaverse:
A “YouTube” Metaverse For 3D Movies And Immersive Videos
As we know, YouTube is the dominant video platform on the Web. The platform also allow user to upload 360 videos but the variety of VR contents is still limited. Here in then lies an opportunity to create a specialty platform to cater to VR content creators.
Entrepreneurs who are compelled to take on this mega opportunity can start by learning from the history of YouTube. Perhaps you can learn from YouTube’s mistakes as well as see how the founders overcame numerous challenges.
Are you now getting excited about VR or AR technology? If you are, why not consider launching a startup in a non-USA market? This could be in South America or other markets in Asia where English is also widely spoken. The laws and regulations in other countries might also give you more freedom to innovate.
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Metaverse Business Opportunities For Today’s Market
Challenges of Integrating AR or VR Technology
You must understand that 3D graphics is a more sophisticated technology than 2D graphics. Everything we see in augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) experience is pretty much 3D.
Basically, in order to produce high-quality AR or VR experiences that can draw-in interest, you will need:
- robust software development
- 3D modeling expertise
- seamless technical integration into websites.
- creative storytelling
- designing skills
As you can see, creating a fantastic VR metaverse product is not simple. Just take the 3D modeling component as an example. A professionally created 3D model could take days or weeks to create. This is obviously much more time compared to creating a content that is composed of images and videos. There are some AI tools in the market that can create 3D models with text prompts but the quality of the models is still far from what 3D artists can create.
Don’t forget too that 3D graphics require a much longer time to load and render on-screen, compared to 2D contents. Your typical broadband or 4G connection may be able to load an image of video within seconds. But for a 3D model, it may require four to five times as much loading time. You must take this time factor into account as it will affect user experience.
The good news is, there are numerous online marketplaces that offer a wide variety of 3D models to download. Some are free to download but the high quality models may cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
You should also bear in mind that AR still often require advanced hardware capabilities. You must consider that not all your potential customers can afford a high-end smartphone. This technological barrier could also be one of the reasons why businesses are hesitant to adopt AR technology.
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Conclusion
As you can see, the metaverse offers a wealth of viable business opportunities. It is really up to the entrepreneurs to explore the potentials.
With solid research, you could very well find a profitable niche. This could be in e-commerce, education, job training, virtual events or social media. You just have to seek out emerging markets and tap into it.
As the metaverse continues to evolves, those who seize these opportunities will be well-positioned to thrive. We should note that ChatGPT rose to stardom in just about two years, which prompted everyone to talk about AI. Similarly, a well-designed metaverse product could very well be a pioneer in jumpstarting the metaverse industry.
