Why does your home retail business need a 3D planning solution?

Discover the key three ways a 3D planning solution can provide your customers with an improved and differentiated online experience.

A 3D planning solution can no longer be considered an added extra for home retailers; it has become an experiential necessity for shoppers looking to complete home furnishing purchases online – as this article explains.

The home retail industry is undergoing a period of massive transformation. Consumers’ browsing and shopping habits are moving beyond the traditional parameters, and recent economic uncertainties have further accelerated this change. The retailers that continue to thrive are the ones using technology to keep a pulse on their customers’ preferences and provide compelling new reasons to shop with them.

The home remodeling market continues to show immense promise despite the market challenges, with a big rise in home remodeling and DIY trends of late. The DIY home improvement market alone is expected to surpass $189.1 million by 2026. For home retailers to grow their customer base and retain those who are looking for tomorrow’s best shopping experience, a 3D planning solution can help reach another level of online engagement.

Advanced solutions, such as the HomeByMe Home Furniture & Decor Planner, can provide your customers with an improved and differentiated online experience in three key ways:

Continuing to optimize and elevate the shopping experience, launching true omnichannel experiences that allow them to have the same experience online that they have in-store
Boosting e-commerce by building consumer confidence in an online purchase
Enhancing data-driven automation to improve processes and efficiencies, and acquiring data to enhance marketing, inform customer insights and prevent errors

Optimizing omnichannel engagement

Digital and physical environments no longer work in isolation. An advanced 3D planning solution goes a long way in giving customers control over their shopping experience and ensuring that their journey has the same ease of experience, whether online or in-store. A more connected experience provides more meaningful touchpoints to ensure happier customers.

By opting for an intuitive web-based solution, consumers can sketch and build hyper-realistic designs online within minutes to help them visualize ideas for their home using your product catalog. It then gives customers the flexibility to choose whether they would like to make the purchase online or after visiting a store. Here, sales professionals can access each customer’s designs to provide additional guidance and validation, and to continue planning or altering designs that are an accurate reflection of their home.

Home redesign can be a daunting task, but a 3D planning solution – such as HomeByMe Furniture & Decor Planner – provides a cohesive platform for customers to visualize their designs and purchases, while offering a more personalized and flexible shopping experience that instills confidence and encourages greater engagement.

Scaling e-commerce operations

Now, more than ever, consumers are accepting of e-commerce transactions for a range of purchases, and so a 3D planning solution can help differentiate your home retail business from the competition.

Consumers who have designed their living spaces using 3D planning technology are far more likely to have engaged with a room, viewed it from different perspectives, rectified any design errors and even shared it socially to gain other opinions. As a result, they have more confidence in their purchases and are more receptive to recommendations of complementary or alternative products, which can help increase the average basket size and transaction value.

As the popularity of online shopping continues to soar, e-commerce also represents a new wave of opportunity for boosting revenue and brand awareness in new geographies, without the investment and overheads of opening brick-and-mortar stores. A cloud-based 3D planning solution can help to increase marketing and sales engagement and ensure accurate orders, while building up crucial insights to inform future decisions. This allows home retailers to enter new markets and gain faster traction with far less risk.

Improving processes and efficiencies

Data has always been crucial to improving processes and efficiencies, but a 3D planning solution can help you connect with customers in a more robust fashion. Insight from the customer journey ensures your sales and service teams know exactly who they are talking to in order to easily address queries and provide recommendations tailored to their preferences. In this way, insight from the platform can also be used to personalize the online user experience and communicate more effectively via marketing, social media, and re-engagement campaigns.

The fact that 67% of shoppers check the returns page before making a purchase suggests that customers already anticipate the products they buy may not be what they want in reality. (Source: Invespro) Because it’s so tricky to keep abreast of changing customer preferences, a 3D planning solution can provide a rich source of data to help better map products to customer demands – all while providing a greater ability for customers to visualize products in their home, see a 360-degree view, and make a better-judged decision on the look and fit in their home. This way, purchases are less likely to be returned for replacements or refunds as a result, helping to protect profit margins.

Conclusion

The future of home retail is changing and only the retailer that offers a superior customer experience will emerge as the winner. An advanced, online 3D planning solution such as HomeByMe Furniture & Decor Planner includes a range of features to inspire confidence in your customers to complete their purchase. Combined with design insight from the platform, retailers can build an accurate and unique picture of customers to inform successful marketing and communications strategies – elevating the customer experience to support online sales, minimize returns and maximize profits.