Home furnishings marketers build welcoming sites
by Christine Bittar
Sales of home furnishings have been lackluster
given the slump in the housing market, but home improvement marketers have become more aggressive in an effort to counteract the cyclical slump. Interactive and online efforts, which tend to have a
higher ROI than traditional TV and print ad campaigns, are growing more sophisticated.
E-commerce sales at the largest home retailers are on the rise. And the number of
do-it-yourselfers (DIYs) has increased due both to the housing boom of the last decade and to the Internet. At The Home Depot, for instance, which has the highest online sales of any home retailer,
online sales increased from $163.7 million in 2004, representing 34 percent of total category sales, to $279.7 million, or 33 percent of the category last year, per eMarketer, citing an estimate by
InternetRetailer.com. Lowe’s, No. 2 in the online hardware/home improvement retail category, brought in sales of $110.2 million in 2004, accounting for 23 percent of category sales, and racked
up $148.8 million in sales in 2005.
Most home retailers are not yet focused on streaming video or even online customer relationship marketing tactics, according to Marc
Blumberg, senior vice president at the interactive agency imc2. Instead, for these retailers, catering to consumers online means realizing that their Web sites serve as a research tool as well as an
e-commerce site; assisting with that research can ultimately mean higher sales.
“Many chains [Lowe’s, Sam’s Clubs, and Pier 1] are dealing with the
fact that their biggest stores, financially, are actually their dot-com sites,” says Blumberg. Still, he adds, “Retailers have to get out of the transaction mindset.”
DIYs Versus DIFMs
Blumberg believes that many home furnishings and improvement companies are gradually gaining a deeper
understanding of their consumers. Many home improvement marketers are looking for ways to cater to the growing number of DIYs. For example, bathroom products marketer Moen is helping consumers by
letting them “create an experience,” says Blumberg. A feature on Moen.com called “design center” allows consumers to pick and choose bathroom and kitchen elements to see how
combinations look together while also tracking pricing. A user who clicks on “design your own bath” can choose various faucets and experiment with countertops and colors, cabinet designs,
paint colors for walls, and other items Moen doesn’t offer.
James Kim, vice president of strategy at Organic, says that when his agency works with a client on Web
site design, it generally separates consumers into two different groups: There are the DIYs and the do-it-for-mes (DIFMs). DIYs want to create their own combinations, and DIFMs want color schemes
planned, Kim says.
On its Web site, flooring company Armstrong caters to DIYs with an “installation” section offering instructions and downloadable guides
on how to install various types of flooring, including wood, linoleum, laminate, and ceramic tile. There are also room design sections to help consumers create mock-up rooms. Armstrong also sells
“design my room” software for $9.99 that allows consumers to experiment with various design options and how they’ll look by uploading photos.
Virtual Furnishings
Scene 7, a San Francisco-based technology firm, specializes in on-demand and rich media platforms and has consulted on home
improvement retailers’ Web strategies. The shop’s home furnishings and home improvement clients — including Delta Faucet, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware — are getting
positive results by using Scene 7’s graphics-enhancing software. Sheila Dahlgren, senior vice president of marketing at Scene 7, says that client Williams-Sonoma reported a nearly 50 percent
increase in Web site conversion rates since it incorporated the rich media technology.
Restoration Hardware used Scene 7 software to allow consumers to see different
fabrics on upholstered furniture. While other sites generally show fabric swatches next to a sofa, clicking on any one of the sofas and chairs on the Restoration site shows multiple views and enables
consumers to zoom in and out on every available fabric on any chair or sofa.
Dahlgren explains that displaying accurate images of fabrics on furniture is more
complicated than showing different color choices of clothing on apparel sites, because it’s important that textured and print fabrics drape correctly on furniture, especially with elaborate or
tufted styles. “On a $2,000 couch, those are critical details. You want to see exactly how it will look,” Dahlgren adds.
The only alternative to including
these details without the Scene 7 software is to build it manually in Flash. It’s also often a costly proposition to shoot the photos necessary to illustrate the range of choices, according to
Dahlgren.
Williams-Sonoma Home is also a Scene 7 client. One of the more notable ways it’s using the technology on its Web site is by offering personalization
features. Williams-Sonoma offers personalization and monograms on items including aprons, glasses, cheeseboards, and cookies. Going online allows shoppers to see how a name or monogram will look
printed on an apron or glass before it’s purchased — an important benefit, since personalized items aren’t returnable.
For Drexel Heritage, Scene 7
created “Room Scenes,” which allow consumers to pick items out of a decorated room and obtain pricing, as well as dimensions via a pop-up window adjacent to the room image.
And for The Home Depot, Scene 7 technology is incorporated in stores via Behr paint kiosks to help customers select and coordinate paint colors. The site for home furnishings
giant La-Z-Boy helps consumers configure their room layouts with a “Room Planner” that can be saved or printed out. Beyond merely arranging furniture, the Room Planner functions like an
online drafting tool, allowing for changes in room measurements, room shape, and even exact measurements of furniture and other items in a room.
Organic’s Kim
says home retailers need to use more streaming video on their sites, something he says would work nicely to support DIY instructions. Kim says he’d like to see home retailers reach out to online
social communities — something that could easily be done through e-mails or even via chat rooms.