The home improvement industry has grown exponentially in recent years. When the pandemic forced people to stay at home, many took that opportunity to change their surroundings, often taking inspiration from social media to do it all themselves. Not to mention the housing market boom which saw many decide to sell their homes in favour of a change of scenery.
During this time, sales for ‘DIY’ ecommerce stores and home decor businesses, rocketed due to demand. However, that’s not to say there haven’t also been some issues. Huge supply chain disruptions meant that there just haven’t been enough products to meet the increasing demand. Now, home improvement stores are working hard to rebuild the customer loyalty potentially lost due to these challenges, while also making sure their backend processes are capable of handling rapid growth.
As ecommerce businesses look to pull away from the pandemic, it’s time to focus on optimising store operations in order to keep momentum and build on their existing customer base. Here’s what they should be focusing on right now.
User-Friendly, Content-Rich Website
This seems self-explanatory. Every website should be considered user-friendly, but particularly so if you’re trying to sell a product. The question is: how?
The home improvement industry is all about knowledge. Unless you are a B2B site, most of the time you’ll be selling directly to the consumer and someone who is potentially going to conduct renovations themselves, or at least be the decision-maker. With that in mind, your website should be filled with helpful content such as purchasing guides, blogs, how-tos and other educational material that provides inspiration and encourages consumers to choose you over your competitors.
It’s also imperative you think about the overall functionality of your website. Product filtering, site search and clear messaging all go a long way to making sure your website is user-friendly and takes your customer from A to B. Utilising a platform such as Searchspring can provide you with the tools to understand your customers’ behaviour in order to make positive changes to their shopping experience. As a Searchspring partner, we have helped many clients improve their customer’s shopping journeys by using the platform to improve the functionality of site search and merchandising.
Optimising for Search
We all know that SEO should be a crucial part of any online merchant’s strategy but many forget how important it is to be consistent with search optimisation.
Great news, you made it to page 1 of Google! You don’t need to do anything now.
Wrong.
You must keep putting in the work or your competitors will swipe that top position from under you.
A great tactic for this is dedicating some time each month to go through your web pages and optimise your meta titles and descriptions. Don’t forget about your product pages either, this is what a lot of people will be searching for.
Reward Loyalty
Loyalty schemes aren’t a new marketing tool but they are still relatively underused with home improvement online stores. While consumers may not be buying paint or tools as regularly as they buy food or clothes, you do want them to think of you when they’re in need of certain products. Offer incentives for larger orders too, such as free delivery or discounts for spending over a certain amount.
To encourage repeat purchases, you may also want to introduce a point-based system that can be redeemed against purchases or other rewards. This will incentivise customers to always choose you for their home improvement or decoration needs.
Dominate the Social Space
One of the reasons why home improvement has become so popular is down to its documentation on social media sites such as TikTok, Pinterest and Instagram. There are a whole host of influencers out there sharing their renovation journeys or small home decor hacks. In order for your brand to stand out, it’s imperative that you have a presence on social media. Whether that’s working with influencers directly on ad campaigns or introducing social selling, maintaining your social media channels should be a huge part of your marketing strategy.
Ensure you invest in high-quality photos or videos to create an authentic and trustworthy brand profile. Encourage your customers to share their own photos of your products in situ and share them with your own followers as well as theirs. User-generated content is key to building brand awareness, loyalty and reliability.
Your content should also be about more than just selling. Include how-to videos, 360 views of your products and introduce polls and Q&As that encourage your customers to interact with you.
Build for the Future
You may think the work is already done. Your sales have increased rapidly since the pandemic, so why would you need to change anything? Well, nothing stays the same forever and opportunists will find ways to reap the benefits of your hard work. New businesses are popping up all the time and if you don’t keep on top of your website and your brand presence, you’ll soon lose those customers you’ve worked hard to attract.
If you’re unsure of where to start in implementing the above tips, get in touch with one of our ecommerce experts who can guide you through your journey to scale.
