Shop All Things Home On The App
My Experience Using Bed Bath & Beyond App
To be honest, I’ve never tried shopping for furniture on apps. I feel insecure while shopping through phones, especially for things like furniture. I guess it’s the reason that furniture is much more expensive than most of the items I would purchase. So instead of purchasing furniture online, I would usually go in-store to check out those items. Sometimes you just want to make sure everything is right, the textiles, the quality, the exact color you want, etc. Especially when it comes to something you would use for a long period of time. Finally, after I’ve made sure everything is perfect, I would go online and order them. Sound like a lot of hassle, right? But I’ve actually asked a lot of friends and families, and everyone seems to have a similar shopping pattern when it comes to purchasing new furniture. So I guess there’s a lot of customers out there having the same issues as I do.
From my own perspective, a great furniture shopping app should be able to deal with customer’s uncertainty and create a smooth shopping experience. Can a mobile app become the first and last stop of a customer’s purchase journey? The answer might become yes only if it meets the characteristics below. And that’s what makes me think Bed Bath & Beyond has the potential of becoming one.
Tech Integrated
This app allows you to manage and redeem the offers or coupons you have directly through barcodes, which is quite a convenient tool. Besides, there’s also a pretty cool function called visual search, which you can point your rear camera at any furniture you like and the system will analyze similar furniture you’d love. The only downside for this function is that it’s inaccurate at times. For example, I tried to scan my lamp and the system pops out suggestions for mirrors.
Thoughtful Function
Browsing through the app, I’ve noticed a common yet useful function, the “Filter” button on top of the page. You see the “Filter” button everywhere at furniture apps nowadays. But one thing that I feel most companies forget is to bring convenience to customers.
Bed Bath and Beyond really pays attention to the detail of customizing what customers need. In the “Filter” section, you get to choose what specific product type you want, the price range you could afford, brand, and even which specific color you would want. It’s like a funnel filtering out what your ideal product is. The results are satisfying after I tried out several items that I’d like to purchase. It’s a pretty useful function!
Great Customer Service
A mobile app has to be well designed to make customers feel assured while shopping. I think for every furniture apps, return procedures should be built up perfectly so that customers wouldn’t need to be worried about their orders. Things could go wrong, size doesn’t fit, color doesn’t look nice, or there are damages during shipping. If they found out how hard it would be when they try to return something, there’s a big possibility they won’t shop at your app again. That being said, Bed Bath & Beyond does a great job at customer service. If the furniture you’ve purchased doesn’t work out for you, you could easily return.
Personalized Experience
In the app, you could find a useful function called “Idea Board”. It’s hard for people to make decisions when there are multiple options. I think the process of purchasing a piece of furniture takes a relatively long amount of time. It could be time-consuming and frustrating. So instead of pushing information toward customers, why not let them create their own preferences? Idea Board is a brilliant idea of letting customers create what they like and want in their own way. It’s all about the shopping experience!
Beyond+ Member
This is a membership program that my roommate has always been complimenting about. I didn’t really take it seriously or think of it as a big deal until one day I had to replace my old chair. The best benefit from this is you get 20% off and free shipping EVERY purchase for just $29 a year! So my roommate ordered the new chair for me with the price 20% off. I really think this membership program is a great deal for online shoppers.
My user experience of the app was pretty good, it has almost everything you need for the furniture mobile app. Clear interfaces, organized categories, and customized idea board. It is not a boring app selling merely furniture! It got some additional functions like augmented reality and customized idea boards which make you really want to download. Overall, Bed Bath & Beyond manage to sell you a good service and experience which you’ll gradually find yourself sticking with this brand.
