Adding a 3D and AR Product Viewer to the Website You Already Have

The two assumptions that stop most businesses looking at augmented reality are that customers would need an app, and that the website would have to be rebuilt. Neither is true, and the second one is worth taking apart because it is the expensive assumption.

It is one iframe

The 3D and AR viewer is hosted by us and dropped into your existing site as a single iframe — the same mechanism you already use for an embedded video or a map. It looks like this:

No replatforming, no plugin to maintain, no separate AR service for your staff to log into, and nothing about your checkout, theme or hosting changes.

The one technical detail that matters

The embed carries an allow attribute requesting two permissions: camera and xr-spatial-tracking. Those are what let the AR session open from inside the frame. If they are stripped — some CMS editors and security plugins rewrite embed code — the 3D viewer still works but the AR button will not, which is the single most common reason an otherwise correct installation misbehaves. It is worth checking the published page source rather than the editor preview.

What it looks like on the page

The viewer sits on the product page alongside the photographs rather than replacing them. Visitors can turn the model, zoom it and change the colour or specification without leaving the page or loading anything new. On a phone, a button hands the model to the operating system's AR view and the camera opens; on a desktop they keep the interactive 3D viewer, which is the experience most visitors will have.

It is also built not to cost you page speed on visitors who never use it: the viewer bundle loads when somebody taps, not when the frame loads. An embed that slowed every product page down to serve a minority feature would not be worth having.

What to settle before you start

• Which products first. Start with a few where space or finish is the thing customers hesitate over, not the whole catalogue.
• Where the model data comes from. CAD, measurements or a scan — this sets both cost and timeline. See what augmented reality actually costs.
• Who can edit the product template. On Shopify and WordPress this is usually whoever maintains the site; the change itself is small.
• How variants map to what you sell. If a product has six finishes, the model should carry six, and the one chosen on the page should follow into AR.

Who looks after it afterwards

Very little, which is the point of hosting the viewer rather than installing one. There is no plugin to update on your side and no AR platform to administer. If Apaxon already looks after your site through website maintenance, the embed is covered along with everything else; if the site is built or rebuilt as part of the same project, that falls under web development.

Try it before you commit

The augmented reality page carries live demonstrations — a monitor you can stand on your own desk, a vehicle inspector and a conservatory configurator — all running through exactly the embed described here. Open it on a phone and use it; it is a better test than any description. The mechanics are explained in WebAR explained, and we are happy to talk through what your own products would need.