Today’s hyper-connected consumers have high expectations but a low tolerance for disappointment, making a seamless and unified omnichannel experience critical. Meeting and exceeding those expectations can help increase sales and lifetime value and drive loyalty. So, do you deliver a seamless omnichannel experience? The 2022 Omnichannel Retail Index findings can help retailers and brands learn the latest digital and omnichannel best practices in the retail industry and the home vertical. The study benchmarks 115 retailers and brands across more than 250 best-practice capabilities. It is a barometer of how companies meet consumers’ growing channel-agnostic needs.
The home vertical category
So, how did the home vertical category perform? The good news is the highest-ranking retailer with a high score of 85% adoption of best practices is a home retailer! Overall, the home vertical ranks third with an average adoption rate of 61% for best practice capabilities. There is a lot to cheer about, but many opportunities to up your omnichannel customer experience game.
Visualization
Where did home retailers excel? Innovative mobile functionality stood out. Home retailers are leveraging augmented retail (AR) to assist customers in designing a room. According to the Index, 44% of home retailers have some “visualize the room” functionality. In contrast, only 19% of other verticals offer some “virtual try-on.” The ability to see the product in the actual space combined with measurement capabilities can reduce hesitation and give the customer confidence to hit the buy button.
Content
Retailers know that content is vital, but many retailers struggle to balance content and commerce. The home category gets it right. 50% of home retailers allow customers to add products to their cart while engaging with content, compared to a lackluster 13% adoption by other indexed retailers. Consumers like this feature and the home vertical is ripe with how-to articles, blogs featuring décor advice, and suggesting related items like pillows or lamps to put a finishing touch on a room. In addition to making the shopping experience informative, these features can help increase order size and encourage cross-sells and upsells right up to checkout.
Wish list functionality
Consumers love convenience. The Index reveals a 100% adoption rate by home retailers to allow the consumer to save an item to a wish list or a favorites list on the product detail page. That’s impressive, considering the overall adoption is 68%. Making it easy to access a saved product can help increase conversion and offer an opportunity for the retailer to send a relevant reminder email or personalized messaging.
Personalization
Time to get personal! There are opportunities for home retailers to improve the user experience and get to know the customer better. The Index also revealed that only 29% of home retailers allow consumers to manage personalization information like room sizes, preferred styles, and areas of interest. This is compared to an overall adoption of 60% of other vertical retailers. Implementing personalization capabilities within a preference center can send timely and relevant messages to shoppers and boost engagement and conversion.
How about email?
Email is consistently a top way to develop a relationship with prospective customers and continue to build with current customers for retention. Surprisingly, only 33% of home retailers offer email sign-up on their site; the overall adoption by retailers is 52%. This can be an essential tactic for customer acquisition and building out your first-party data strategy.
Messaging
Finally, the Index uncovered an often-missing feature that can help increase basket size and sales. Only 11% of retailers in the home vertical do any messaging about spending more on something to get a promotion in the cart. This trails behind the 41% adoption rate of threshold messaging in the cart in the overall retail industry.
Conclusion
The home vertical category performance was good this year, but there are opportunities to be great. Implementing best practices around personalization, acquiring consumer emails and data, and threshold messaging are a few suggestions to reduce friction and create a seamless customer journey.
Learn how the home vertical did in the 2022 Omnichannel Retail Index benchmarking by downloading the report—wondering how your company stacks up? Let us benchmark your company against the Index to find opportunities to improve the omnichannel experience. Please get in touch with us at omnichannelretailindex@osf.digital.
