The Home Improvement Brands Using Mobile to Build Better Experiences
Creating a customized living space is inherently all about personalization, so it’s no wonder that home improvement brands had some of the highest RPI scores of any category. Of the three brands included in our study — Houzz, The Home Depot, and Lowes — none scored lower than a 50. That standout performance is due, in part, to stellar mobile scores for apps that go beyond simply offering products, to offering opportunities for customization, discovery, and sometimes even going above and beyond to create better in-store shopping experiences. Here are a few of the ways home improvement brands are leveraging mobile to build integrated customer experiences across platforms.
9 Home Depot
The Home Depot has long been a star among brands hoping to create cross-device connections with customers, and 2020 was no different. As the world’s largest home improvement retailer, the Home Depot has been named a favorite of millennials, according to a 2018 survey. That could be because the brand’s mobile app connects users to their local Home Depot, listing product availability and even offering users assistance in navigating its notoriously huge, warehouse-like stores. Home Depot’s omnichannel approach never loses track of which products piqued customers’ interests, whether they’re on mobile, email, or web; and its app even helps customers calculate exactly what quantities of supplies they’ll need in order to complete their home improvement project.
47 Lowe’s
In 2020, the Lowe’s app saw an unprecedented number of new downloads – thanks, perhaps in part, to customers undertaking new home improvement challenges amid the pandemic. In order to rise to the occasion, Lowe’s has introduced new features, such as Lowe’s Vision Navigation, to make finding the correct products easier than ever before. Vision Navigation offers users step-by-step directions for finding products at their local Lowe’s, making the integration of on- and offline engagement more seamless than ever before. Additionally, Lowe’s has one of the lowest “spinner times” (the amount of time users spend waiting for content to appear) of any app around.
67 Houzz
With more than 16 million high-resolution images of interiors, a selection of over 10 million products available for purchase, and an interactive 3-D feature to see exactly what a product will look like in customers’ homes, it’s no wonder that Houzz has been called the “Wikipedia of interior design” by CNN. But to keep all that choice from becoming overwhelming, Houzz also focuses on customization, offering augmented reality room measurement options to its Pro feature in 2020 to help professionals envision client space without breaking coronavirus protocols, along with options for hosting video conferences without ever leaving the app.