Storytelling in E-commerce: From Passive Narrative to Active Co-Creation

This article has been updated in November 2025 by Sabrina KHADIVI.

Today, most of our modern storytelling happens through technology. Learn how storytelling in digital commerce builds loyalty and drives sales, thanks to interactive tools like AR and 3D. Most e-commerce product pages are just digital catalogs, meaning that they are forgettable and people can easily leave your website.

When it’s done right, storytelling can serve as one of the most effective and authentic ways to raise awareness about your brand.

What is the art of brand storytelling (and why does it work)?

Storytelling involves building a narrative to communicate a message to a specific audience. This means pulling together facts and information in a compelling way to educate, entertain, or both.

But when companies use storytelling for the purposes of marketing and improving brand awareness, it takes on a more nuanced meaning.

At its core, the art of storytelling employs a concept known as emotional branding.

Emotional branding is advertising that speaks directly to a customer’s needs and feelings.**

In marketing, this is the essence of how storytelling works. It provides value to the customer by showing how a certain product or service will positively impact their life and solve their problems. It also helps you share your brand’s identity and personality.

When brands use storytelling, making customers feel is the first objective; selling to them becomes the natural next step.

Why does storytelling work for both business and end users

Storytelling is effective because it’s a natural part of our everyday lives

Research shows that 65% of the conversations we have with other people involve some element of storytelling.

We are good at processing and connecting with the story and the owner.

Furthermore, humans are wired for it. Science studies have shown that storytelling activates a process called neural coupling, where different parts of our brains are activated and we use our own experiences to process the story that we’re observing. We form a personal connection to the material.

That connection also extends to the person telling the story. In the case of advertising, that connection could be with the people or actors featured in your ad or with your brand.

The power of well crafted storytelling

In the past, traditional advertising was focused on selling – this is our product, this is what it’s made of, and this is what it does. But the customer craves something more personalized and inspired.

A study by OneSpot states that 92% of customers want advertising that feels like stories.

This is because stories have power. In addition to fostering more meaningful connections, great storytelling can help the audience learn and retain new information. And, it can help companies stand out in the attention economy.

The 4 Pillars of a Story That Sells

Though storytelling is effective and meaningful, not just any story will do. There are 4 four simple but critical techniques to help us understand the art of storytelling.

1. Ensure the message is clear

Every story should have a thesis statement. There should be a clear principle or moral that the audience takes away once the story is over. Before you create an outline or storyboard, the ultimate objective of the story must be established.

2. Make it emotional

For storytelling to work, it has to incorporate an emotion, like happiness or anger. One way to ensure your story includes emotion is to draw from your personal experiences. If you want the audience to feel joy, think of a time in your life when you experienced joy and recreate that in your story. People remember you for the emotions you made them feel, not just your products.

3. Don’t make it about your brand

While it’s true that storytelling’s purpose is to spread awareness of your brand, the central character of your story shouldn’t be the brand itself or one of its executives. Instead, create characters or heroes that the audience can relate to.

4. Create a journey

Stories should highlight some sort of conflict or struggle. Then, by the story’s end, the hero should overcome the struggle to find success. Even if the story is just two minutes long, it should take the audience on a complete journey.

How to apply interactive storytelling successfully to your business? With real world case studies

Once you understand how to tell a great story and you’ve identified a story that you want to tell your audience, there are a few ways to approach it.

1. Let your customers ‘build’ their own story with a 3D configurator

In visual storytelling, you’ll use video, photos, or infographics to connect with your audience. But static visuals can be limiting and prevent your customers from fully understanding and experimenting with your products, which is why 3D configurators are the perfect tool. With these digital tools you can let your customers become the creator, and the story is one of personalization, choice and self-expression.

3D product configurators are interactive tools that allow online shoppers to view 3D renderings of products and customize them in real-time. For example, a customer could pull up an image of a sneaker and view it from multiple angles. Then, they could select different color schemes to figure out what they like best. This gives customers the power of choice, and it helps them make fast, informed decisions. From a storytelling standpoint, the customer takes an active role in forming a relationship with your product.

Co-design: by letting them co-design your products, you allow them to connect to your brand, the emotional impact is huge. Every digital tool can be used as an analyst tool, for instance to track the number of clicks and interaction with it, so that you can measure the effectiveness and the impact on your SEO but not just that. It can also be used to track the trends, by letting your customers create their own products, you can see what people truly want. By giving them the freedom to create, you gain insightful information.

2. Place your story in their world through Augmented Reality

Technological advances are giving brands new, innovative ways to take their storytelling to the next level.

Source: Guerlain official website

Augmented reality (AR) storytelling involves using technology to overlay a user’s real world with graphics or information. This was the foundation of the viral mobile game Pokémon Go, and many brands are putting it to use.

3. Building trust with Virtual Try-On

The fundamental challenge in digital commerce is the "touch-gap": customers can't physically interact with products or try them on. This is precisely the problem Virtual Try-On (VTO) solves. This technology allows customers to virtually "wear" products on their own bodies, moving from passive browsing to active, personal engagement. We partnered with Baume & Mercier to create a virtual try-on experience for the iconic Riviera collection, designed to enhance customer engagement, personalization, and online sales across the brand.

The benefits are compelling for both the brand and the buyer.

For the Business:

• Boosted Conversion: VTO directly tackles the primary source of online hesitation, significantly increasing add-to-cart rates and customer confidence.
• Data Insights: You gain real-time data on which configurations are most popular and what styles are trending with your specific audience.

For the Consumer:

• The Fitting Room, Anywhere: They get the confidence of an in-store experience from their living room. They can experiment and "play" with dozens of configurations, completely risk-free.
• Colorimetry & Perfect Matching: They can instantly analyze how different colors and materials complement their unique skin tone, ensuring they find the perfect piece before they buy.

It’s important to remember that stories should center around characters instead of the brand, and the brand’s values should be consistent across each story. The featured characters and scenarios should also be relatable.

How to build your digital commerce story: a 3-step plan

Step 1: Define your core narrative

Ask yourself what your brand offers consumers. With fierce competition in the digital age, how do you differentiate yourself from others? You need to define the core of your message, and from there you can disseminate your storytelling in different forms to reach your audience.

Step 2: Choose your Medium

Match the story to the channel. Is your story about personalization? Use a 3D configurator. Is your story about fitting into your customer's life? Use AR. The luxury brand Fred masterfully uses this for its iconic Fred Force 10 bracelet collection. A customer doesn't just see the bracelet: they co-create it. They can configure every detail (materials, colors …) and then instantly "try on" their unique creation on their own wrist to see exactly how it will look.

Step 3: Let go of the script

The most important step for interactive commerce, your job is to offer the digital experience and then give the customer the freedom to co-design the product. A perfect example of successful interactive storytelling is Styl’IA, a personal kitchen stylist that combines conversational AI and a 3D configurator. In just a few exchanges, the consumer visualizes their kitchen adapted to their space, desires, and budget. They can then book an appointment with a specialist to make their personalized kitchen come to life.

As storytelling continues to grow in popularity, it will only become more immersive due to new tech.

Advanced technologies will have an increasingly important impact in this process to help brands educate, entertain, and innovate.

By using AR and VR, the audience will continue to play a more active role in telling the story. Emotions will be elicited not just by what the audience sees but also by what they feel and the actions they take.

And, we’ll see this move beyond branding efforts. Even fields like education and journalism will combine storytelling best practices and new technology to reach new audiences.

Conclusion

Storytelling offers a more engaging and authentic way to connect with your target audience. Compared to traditional advertising, it has more of an impact because the audience is naturally wired to respond to it. There’s also a growing demand for it.

To master the art of storytelling, brands are required to create clear messaging and maintain consistency across each story. If they’re done well, great stories will accomplish more than simply selling a product or service – they’ll help potential customers form an emotional bond with your brand.