Note: This is a guest post written by Mark Jawes
COVID-19 has changed the way we live and made us rethink everything from grocery shopping to celebrating birthdays to shopping. Now, with all the additional digital screen time we have been having over the past year, many of us are starting to require glasses.
However, no more do we feel comfortable as before to go try on a bunch of glasses at our optician; let alone visit the optician as most appointments get delayed or cancelled these days.
Fortunately, retailers like VisionDirect.com.au have brought cutting edge technologies to us along with a vast breadth of designer and affordable eyewear brands at the best price online to make our new normal life easier to navigate. Read on to learn about the latest tools available on their site to buy your new pair of stylish glasses.
Vision Direct has a Virtual Try-On tool that helps accurately gauge how a certain pair of glasses or sunglasses look on you. This is a lot of fun to use. Their augmented reality-powered technology can produce hyper-realistic images of you wearing over 10,000 designer eyeglasses and sunglasses in real-time.
To use this feature, all you have to do is take a selfie video on their website using your phone or webcam, the tool uses this to determine your face shape and recommend the most suitable frames that would flatter you the most. That gives you a selfie view for every pair you see on their virtual try-on page. This is the safest socially-distanced way to quickly determine whether you like a certain pair or not by virtually trying it on before you buy anything.
Have you ever been in a situation where your glasses have accidentally broken- maybe you sat on them or maybe dropped them and the glasses stems came off? Well, if you’re in such a situation and want to get new glasses, but can’t find your prescription from the last time you visited the optometrist. Vision Direct has also thought about that and released an innovative lens scanner app with which you can just scan the lenses in your current glasses and extract an accurate prescription for free! To use this app, you need only 4 things: a smartphone with the lens scanner app installed, a laptop or computer with a 12” or larger screen, your current pair of prescription glasses, and a standard size magnetic card.
Follow these steps to get your prescription and pupillary distance:
Sync the app with your computer, follow the easy process guided by the app to scan your lenses. Hold the magnetic card on your forehead above your eyebrows and take a selfie for the app to measure your pupillary distance.
By manipulating the light emitted by your screen and using the magnetic part of your card, the lens scanner app retrieves your prescription values. Once the scanning is completed, your accurate prescription information is automatically saved to your account and can be added to any glasses you’d like to purchase.
But, we all know that what truly sets a shopping experience apart is the quality of human interaction and personalisation. Vision Direct has an in-house optician whom you can ask any questions relating to your prescription or eye health in general before or after ordering your glasses. This free optician service is so beneficial, saves time and money spent in visiting an optician. The entire process of shopping online takes less than an hour, as compared to shopping offline, feeling confused and under pressure.
Time for a couple of pro tips. Even if you don’t have a prescription, it’s a good idea to take a look at blue light blocking glasses – the lowest range of frames starts at only $39! With so many of us spending way more time than normal in front of screens, it’s a good idea to shield ourselves from the harmful effects of blue light emitted by these screens, such as persistent headaches or difficulty going to sleep.
Blocking blue light ensures that our body produces an adequate amount of the sleep-inducing hormone known as melatonin. If on the contrary, you spend a lot of time outdoors for work or in the traffic, it’s a good idea to take a look at photochromic glasses. The lenses in these glasses react with UV rays to darken in sunlight and vice versa. This helps prevent eye health issues such as cataract formation, retinal degeneration and even wrinkle formation!
