Home Depot Decor Digital Launch
Home Depot boasts one of the largest home decor product catalogues on the market. Unfortunately, not many shoppers are aware of it given the brand is associated more with power tools and paint, than picturesque spaces. That, and Home Depot does not sell nor market decor in-store.
With the flagship site having a high-performing, and usable product purchasing experience, the Home Depot team was looking for an experience that went beyond the traditional ecommerce journeys. They needed a space for experimentation, and exploration; where users could be introduced to their home goods, while also easily building a cart to create their dream space.
The Ask
Create a solution that expands the perception of Home Depot into being a home decor retailer, not just a hardware store. Target existing customers and convert them into home decor shoppers by providing them with an immersive “shoppable digital showroom” experience.
TIMELINE: 8 WEEKS
The Process
Empathize & Define
While Home Depot had plenty of data on their existing customers, the psychographic, and ethnographic insights were missing. Our team spent several weeks traveling to different regions of the U.S. to meet with customers in their homes. We catalogued consumer preferences, their personal aesthetics, buying habits, and pain points. We combined our research findings with customer data provided by the client and synthesized our work into insights.
Activities:
Competitive audits
Existing decor ecommerce heuristic evaluation
In-home interviews
In-store observations
Research synthesis
Persona creation
Concept & Design
We hosted a client workshop where we tested ideas with existing customers in real time. Interdisciplinary teams would complete multiple rounds of rapid ideation, aligned to the user journey phases, and pass their output along to moderators who validated the concepts with customers. At the end of 2 days, the team had a refined future-state journey and was prepared to move into wireframing.
Activities:
Client ideation workshop
Feature prioritization workshop
Concept Validation
Future-state journey mapping
Wireframing
Develop & Iterate
The internal team split into two groups, one focused on updating and repurposing existing Home Depot ecommerce page templates to be retrofitted to support home decor items. This workstream enabled the client to sell decor online, while the more immersive digital showroom experience was being designed. The digital showroom team collaborated with the innovation and development team to make the experience as tactile and interactive as possible during the build.
Activities:
UI Design
Creative direction
Content development
Showroom rendering
VR/AR concept development
Development sprints
Deploy & Test
The two teams took their work to test with customers who aligned to our personas in two waves. First, they tested prototypes for usability. Then, they launched fully developed MVPs into beta with a small group of persona-aligned user profiles and deployed A/B testing on specific features like style quizzes, and event offerings.
Activities:
Testing moderation
Testing results synthesis
Product backlog and roadmap
The eCommerce Experience
Using Home Depot’s existing page templates, and design system, we developed bespoke modules that fit into the live site’s user flows. Each module enabled decor-focused features that could be strategically placed at critical points in a users purchasing experience.
