IKEA inspires, IKEA is home: customer centric by integrating experiences

Have you ever been to IKEA to buy furniture or home accessories? Or at least, have you ever heard that most people have at least one item of IKEA in their homes? This Swedish company is rocking the furniture world with their trendy designs and affordable prices!

… I’ll explain you a little further why this effect happens pretty often.

“Offline is not off at all”:

First of all, when you arrive to Ikea, especially when you are moving into a new home, the experience is confusing and a little scary since you start picking the items that you want, from scratch, without having any idea at all of what you want, but don’t worry, because IKEA inspires their customers.

For instance, when I moved in from Peru to New York, I had no idea how I wanted to decorate my apartment, I just knew that I had a reduced budget and I wanted modern and cozy furniture in my room, and most importantly, a desk so that I could study.

Second, when you get to the store, you first have to go through the showroom, and then you have to pick all of the items that you like, write them down in your phone or paper and try to picture them out in your house or apartment, measure them and see if they’ll fit perfectly.

After that process, you just go pick them up in the store’s basement and take them home, it is an easy assignment, I promise! Moreover, that cool experience made me also feel that I’m the one that is building my own home, because everything is self-service, so the satisfaction was even bigger.

Well… the same outcome occurs with the online platform!

“Online me if you want me”:

This company as many others have their online platform which is responsive in mobile devices and other equipments such as tablets and laptops. This fact makes it all more comfortable and faster. Ikea has also launched an app (you can’t shop through that app, that’s the only fact that I think they should modify) that makes the purchasing experience in-store easier because they give you the description of the items that they have available in the store, so that when you go to the showroom, you can identify them in a more convenient way.

When you get to the website, you can notice that the structure and branding goes according to the brand’s book because they use the same colors and the experience throughout the whole journey in the website which represents their personality that is to be a self-service company: by showing their products, description, ratings and also the prices. The user experience is very neat and tidy, well organized and the steps are just like their offline store, EASY.

I noticed that those sale products are very easy to be identified because they are highlighted in yellow, therefore the person that is looking for price will get to them immediately, also the purchasing experience is very easy.

The only thing that people doesn’t like (I got that from the reviews) are the shipping costs which are very high, but then I analyzed the strategy and it is clear that they do that since they want people to visit their in-stores to live the IKEA experience. Having said that, IKEA looks forward integrating their offline and online experiences.

In my opinion, their website is fun to use because they can show a picture of how your bedroom, living room or kitchen would look like if you use their products so they try to embrace the client with a projection of their ideal home.

The design of the website itself is very innovative and creative since they show a sort of “Pinterest” concept where you can get ideas of how to decorate your space with their products, so they’ve made a great job by doing that for you because that way the client doesn’t need to think much, just need to be inspired by good taste and being influenced to just buy the whole picture as it is.

Therefore, they are looking for an easy experience for the client and analyzing what they would like and offer them in the website, that’s why this brand is definitely customer centric.

“Ideal = Ikea”

What I like about this website is that they can give you the day to day deal, the products that are on sale, the new products according to every season, they just want the experience of the customer to be quick and being in the top of mind of everyone.

They want to inspire with their look and feel designs but also empower people to feel good about decorating or creating their homes, and they do this throughout the online platforms because it’s the best way to reach most customers.

They want IKEA to represent not only modern designs or lowest prices, but also to represent the IDEA that this company is made perfectly for you, they are following your interests and they want to be in your space, in your life, they want to be part what we call “home”.