People who want to send and receive packages via Royal Mail can benefit from improvements to the firm’s smartphone app, which now integrates augmented reality functions in order to ensure that parcels are sized and priced correctly every time.

Internet Retailing reports that the official app also offers Alexa-enabled abilities to help customers track their packages and ensure that they are either on their way to the right destination or en route to their home addresses.

All of this will clearly help people who like to sell items via safe shopping online marketplaces like that offered by Amazon or via auction sites like eBay.

Around half a million people have already installed the app since it was released in 2018, and this update will only increase its popularity.

A representative of the delivery firm said that the app was intended to drive forward efficiency improvements and make the most of the hardware that is now available to almost every customer on their smartphones.

AR technology has become increasingly important in the retail space in the past couple of years, with companies like IKEA choosing to add it to mobile apps in order to expand the capabilities that are available to customers.

In the case of Royal Mail’s deployment of this solution, the main benefit seems to be one of convenience, since it means that it will take customers less time to work out whether they are sending the right kind of parcel for the right price without having to manually measure everything.

This is not the most head-turning use of AR, yet in many ways it is arguably the best approach, since it speeds things up without being gimmicky and should deliver tangible benefits for the company and its customers now that it has been rolled out.