Bringing the showroom to the screen
Bespoke 3d pergola builder helps bring the showroom experience online, delivering visualisation, customisation and bridging the gap between browsing and buying.
Technical Overview
Platform: Shopify Plus
Solution: Bespoke 3D Pergola Configurator
Key Capabilities
- Custom product configuration engine
- Real-time 3D visualisation
- Augmented reality product placement
- Saved customer configurations
- Shareable designs
- Native Shopify Plus integration
Engineering the showroom experience
For premium Home & Garden brands, their ecommerce site is often limited by one thing: imagination.
A customer can browse through vivid imagery, compare specifications and read detailed product descriptions, but they still need to bridge the gap between your website and imagining the product in their home. For a purchase often worth £1,000s, that leap of faith can become the biggest barrier.
For Chimes, this challenge centred around their bespoke pergola range.
Pergolas are one of the most configurable products within the catalogue, with customers selecting different dimensions, frames and optional accessories to create a solution tailored to their garden. Displaying every possible combination through traditional product pages simply wasn’t practical.
Instead of asking customers to imagine the finished result, we set out to let them build it.
Assessing the solutions
Before committing to a bespoke build, we assessed the available off-the-shelf configurator solutions to understand whether an existing platform could deliver the required functionality at a lower cost and with a faster implementation timeline.
While existing configurators offered a lower cost to start with, they were not built to handle the complexity of a premium pergola product, where dimensions, structural components, accessories and finishes all interact with one another.
Furthermore, using an off-the-shelf solution would have reduced initial development costs, but after analysis, we soon realised the monthly licensing cost of existing software would soon eclipse the up-front investment of a custom project.
It would also have introduced additional challenges through ongoing customisation, platform limitations and compromises around the customer experience. Significant investment would still have been required to adapt the software, create accurate 3D representations and build the product logic required to support Chimes’ manufacturing process.
A bespoke approach allowed the configurator to be designed around Chimes’ exact requirements from the outset. Instead of paying to modify an existing platform around its limitations, the investment was focused on creating a scalable system that could manage complex product rules, deliver a premium visual experience and integrate directly with Shopify Plus.
Developing a bespoke configuration engine
At the core of the experience is a custom-built product logic system that manages every possible customer selection in real time. As customers adjust dimensions, add accessories, change finishes or configure optional features, the system instantly updates the 3D model to reflect their choices, providing immediate visual feedback and helping them understand exactly what they are creating.
Behind the scenes, the configurator handles the complex rules required to ensure every design remains technically valid. It manages product compatibility, pricing variations and configuration dependencies, preventing customers from creating combinations that cannot be manufactured while keeping the experience simple and intuitive.
The bespoke application was also built to integrate seamlessly with Shopify Plus, connecting directly with product data, pricing structures and checkout workflows. This allowed Chimes to combine a highly customised sales experience with the reliability of Shopify’s ecommerce infrastructure.
The result is a tailored piece of software that delivers the flexibility of a showroom experience online, giving customers confidence in their purchase while providing Chimes with a scalable platform that can evolve alongside their product range.
From product page to interactive experience
Traditional ecommerce product pages are designed to present information. Customers browse images, read specifications and select from predefined options before making a purchase decision.
For a complex, high-value product like a bespoke pergola, this approach leaves many unanswered questions. Customers are not simply choosing a product; they are designing a permanent addition to their home, where factors such as size, appearance, positioning and functionality all influence their decision.
The pergola builder transforms this process from passive browsing into an interactive design experience.
Rather than selecting options from a standard product page, customers actively create their own outdoor living space. Every adjustment they make provides immediate visual feedback, helping them understand how different choices affect the final design.
Questions that would previously have required a showroom visit, sales consultation or significant imagination can now be answered instantly:
- How will a larger pergola look within my garden?
- Would a different frame better complement my property?
- Does adding integrated lighting or side screens improve the overall design?
- Will the chosen configuration work within my available space?
Instead of asking customers to visualise these decisions themselves, the experience allows them to see their choices develop in real time. This reduces uncertainty, increases confidence and helps customers progress further through the buying journey.
The result is a digital showroom experience that brings the expertise and reassurance of an in-person consultation into the ecommerce environment.
Using AR for the final touch
While interactive 3D visualisation provides customers with a detailed understanding of their pergola design, one important question remains:
“How will this actually look in my own garden?”
To address this final barrier, we integrated augmented reality directly into the configurator, allowing customers to move from digital visualisation to real-world placement.
Using their smartphone, customers can position their configured pergola within their own outdoor space, giving them a clearer understanding of scale, proportions and how the design works alongside their existing property.
This capability removes one of the biggest challenges associated with purchasing large outdoor products online: uncertainty about how the finished product will look once in place.
By combining product configuration, 3D visualisation and augmented reality, the experience gives customers a new level of confidence.
Built around how customers actually buy
A pergola is a considered purchase. Unlike lower-value ecommerce products that are often bought immediately, customers typically spend time researching options, comparing designs and discussing the decision with partners or family.
The configurator was designed around this longer decision-making process; customers can save their designs, return to them at a later date and share their completed configurations with others involved in the purchase. This allows the decision-making process to continue naturally, without customers needing to restart their design every time they revisit the website.
Delivering results
The bespoke pergola builder has become far more than a visual enhancement. It has become a core part of the customer journey and a powerful sales tool for one of Chimes’ fastest-growing product categories.
Since launch:
- Increased conversion rate across the pergola ranges
- New stream of booked calls for configuring and purchasing pergolas
- AOV increase across pergolas as customers visualise accessories
By reducing uncertainty and increasing customer confidence, the experience helps move customers from inspiration to purchase more effectively than a traditional ecommerce product page ever could.
Showcasing what’s possible with Shopify Plus
The Chimes pergola configurator demonstrates what can be achieved when bespoke software development is combined with a deep understanding of ecommerce.
Rather than adapting the customer journey to fit the limitations of a platform, we engineered a solution around the way customers actually research, configure and purchase premium Home & Garden products.
The result is an immersive buying experience that combines Shopify Plus, custom development, real-time 3D rendering and augmented reality into a seamless digital showroom, helping Chimes stand apart in a competitive market while giving customers the confidence to invest online.