Here is the uncomfortable truth about most AR rollouts: nobody measures them properly. The vendor reports engagement, the store owner feels good, and nobody can say what the feature actually earned. A mobile app to measure AR performance exists to end that.
Start with the basics. What share of product-page visitors open the AR view, and how long do they stay. Then the money metrics: conversion rate of AR users versus non-users on the same products, average order value for each group, and return rates for each group. That last one is the sleeper. Return reduction might be the underrated half of AR's ROI, and it only shows up if you track it.
Then benchmark, because your numbers mean nothing in isolation. An augmented reality commerce database like ARCommerce's gives you published figures from 68 brands to compare against. Teams that want the numbers flowing into their own stack can look for an AR conversion lift database API instead of copy-pasting from spreadsheets.
A word on build versus buy. Unless AR analytics is your product, do not build this. The measurement apps and plugin dashboards already exist. Your time is better spent acting on the numbers than collecting them.
Measure from day one. The stores that do are the ones whose AR budgets survive the second quarter. And keep the dashboard somewhere you will actually look. A metric nobody checks is decoration, not measurement.
Want help setting up measurement that actually answers the ROI question? I consult e-commerce brands on AR implementation at arcommerce.fyi.