Website analysis: A case review of Wayfair Inc. and Houzz
Hi everyone! How’s going?
Our group project this semester is to analysis Wayfair, today, I am going to to a website analysis between Wayfair and Houzz.
Overview
The E-Commerce market has experienced explosive growth over the past decade. This has seen the emergence and significant growth of some of the market’s most dominant players such as Wayfair Inc. and Houzz. The competition within the industry is quite high as more and more consumers not only prefer lower process but also quality and the ability of the sites to deliver products that are to the standards they expect (Fawcett, Stan, et al). This paper shall thus provide an analysis of two e-commerce websites, Houzz.com and houzz.com; evaluating their capacities to deliver their service to their specific target markets.
Wayfair Inc.
Wayfair Inc. refers to an American E-commerce organization selling home accessories and furniture products. It was first founded and launched in 2002 by Steve Conine and Niraj Shah; operating under the name CSN stores which was derived from the name of both founders. At inception, the company was involved in selling media stands and storage furniture before they diversified to become suppliers of patio and garden products one year after beginning operations. By 2016, the Home goods and furniture products market was valued at over $110B (Sevitt), Wayfair Inc. has successfully sustained a brick and clicks strategy, by leveraging their online presence and distribution networks with the physical locations in offering their services. With an average of over 48million clicks and visits on a monthly basis in 2018, Wayfair has proven itself as an important and useful site to its clientele. The company website is mush interactive and allows users to search for the products they want across the wide range of cluster products and goods offered by the company. With an increase in direct traffic over the past 18 months Wayfair Inc. operations and generated income is a true testament of the great loyalty and branding the brand enjoys (Sevitt). The capacity of Wayfair’s website to allow for the use of an organic non-branded search has paid off. Such an interactive access by the user with site allows them to use specific listings such as Mattress, furniture, or desk among others in searching and viewing varied types of comparatively similar products within and also allows them to cap the highest and lowest prices they prefer. While a significant percentage of the visits are on mobile the desktop visits have been on a gradual increase over time.
Houzz
Houzz also operates as an E-commerce company founded in 2009 by Alon Cohen and Adi Tarko, who at the time were working on remodelling their house; finding it hard to communicate their vision to the professionals on how they wanted to make their house look like they decided to create Houzz as a side project to help other home owners in remodelling their own homes. With an average of over 28.2 million clicks, Houzz has proven itself as an important and useful site to the clientele it serves. A majority of the clicks and visits linked to Houzz are majorly on desktop (Sevitt). This can be attributed to the kind of service that is offered by the company. However the company also maintains a mobile version of it site that is nit only interactive by can allow users to colour in certain products that are the guaranteed for delivery to the client. As a late entrant to the sector in comparison to Wayfair, the company began selling directly to clients in 2014 (Sevitt). The ability of the site to offer a community like aspect has undoubtedly provided and offered the organization with an advantage and a contributory factor in augmenting the traffic numbers within a period that has been notably challenging for most retail. The company website also supports organic and inorganic searches where clients are able to search items that are comparatively similar, or within the same category using a generalized term. However, it is also possible to search an indexed and specific item by a specific producer. This allows the client/user to easily navigate, and interactively so across the site.
See you guys next week!
Work cited
Fawcett, Stan, et al. “Technological game changers: convergence, hype, and evolving supply chain design.” Production 28 (2018). http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-65132018000100214 Accessed 5 Oct 2019
Sevitt, Daniel. “Retail Spotlight US: Wayfair, Overstock And Houzz”. Market Intelligence Insights, 2018, https://www.similarweb.com/blog/wayfair-overstock-houzz. Accessed 5 Oct 2019.
