UX Case:“Lucy Design” Competitor analisys — Houzz
- Mission
- 2.Value Proposition
- Customer Segments
- Houzz’s Users
- Traffic
- Revenue Streams
- Product & Technology
- Houzz Marketing Benefits
Mission
The #1 website and app for homeowners who are looking to create the home of their dreams. Houzz’s mission is to deliver the best technology, user experience, and products for home remodeling and design.
Value Proposition
The company creates accessibility by providing a database of home improvement professionals for homeowners to evaluate. The selection includes a wide variety of roles, ranging from architects to designers to contractors. Homeowners can easily contact them when they are interested in obtaining their services. Houzz also increases accessibility for pros by giving them a dedicated consumer audience, enabling them to showcase their work, and allowing them to exchange ideas.
The company offers convenience by gathering a wide range of home improvement resources in a single channel. Its website includes product information, design ideas, photos of completed remodels, renovation tips, DIY tutorials, house tours, professional reviews, industry-focused articles, and recent trends. Moreover, visitors can purchase items they see directly from the site.
The company has established a powerful brand because of its popularity. It claims to have the largest residential design database globally. The site has over one million professionals and reaches over 40 million homeowners from numerous countries.
Houzz has an “other” category for home stagers, media & bloggers, photographers, real estate agents and school and organizations.
Customer Segments
- Homeowners — People who seek home improvement professionals, products, and resources.
- Home Improvement Professionals — Design and construction professionals who want to promote their services to homeowners and purchase products.
- Home Product Sellers — Businesses that want to sell products to homeowners and home improvement professionals.
Houzz’s Users
Houzz’s typical user is known as “The Empowered Client.”:
- upscale homeowners (89% own their homes)
- have an average home value of $450,000
- Have an average income of $124,000
- 78% are married
- 27% are in their first home
- actively building, remodelling or decorating
- 72% plan to decorate or redecorate
- 40% plan to build an addition or remodel
- 10% are planning to have a custom home built
- are spending quite a bit on these projects (kitchen remodel is about $27,000, on average)
And, these typical Houzz Empowered Clients plan in the next two years to:
- hire a general contractor (57%)
- hire a kitchen and bath professional (35%)
- hire a carpet and flooring professional (32%)
- hire an architect (30%)
- hire an interior designer (26%)
- hire a landscape architect or designer (24%)
- hire a windows & coverings professional (20%)
Traffic
Today, Houzz has grown to over 40 million unique monthly users and 1.5 million home professionals in 60 categories. Its marketplace, launched in 2014, has more than 9 million products from more than 20,000 sellers. It sells a wide range of products from tools, cookware, furniture, home decor items, home improvement items like tiles and building material, outdoor furniture, and lighting fixtures.
It has expanded to Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Sydney, Moscow, and Tokyo. It has localized platforms in 14 countries including the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Singapore, New Zealand, and India. Houzz is facilitating a community and marketplace for global design with access to products, talent, and expertise from all over the world.
In 2015, Houzz acquired GardenWeb from NBC Universal at an undisclosed sum. GardenWeb is a garden and home community discussion site. At the time of the acquisition, it was hosting over 14 million posts across 400 discussion topics and 2.8 million discussion threads.
The company’s approach to design works — the Houzz app has over 500,000 five-star reviews across iOS and Android, and it took home the first-ever Best App prize (for all categories) at the 2016 Google Play awards.
Revenue Streams
- Transaction Fees — The company charges product sellers a 15% commission to list their offerings in the website’s “Houzz Marketplace” for homeowners and professionals.
- Subscription Revenues — Home improvement professionals can be listed in the database for free; however, the company offers a Pro+ program through which they can receive additional benefits (heightened visibility in search results, more creative opportunities to highlight work) for an annual subscription fee. Subscription rates can be obtained by contacting Houzz’s sales staff.
- Advertising Revenues — The company charges third parties such as national retailers and product manufacturers a fee to advertise their offerings on the website and in its mobile apps. Current advertisers include Lowe’s, Kohler, SubZero, and Behr.
Product & Technology
Real Cost Finder — In July 2013, Houzz introduced the Real Cost Finder, an interactive tool that helps users plan home renovations and total costs. The tool is based on data collected from the Houzz community. Houzz offers affordable mass-market furniture along with the luxurious options for those not having budget cuts.
Site Designer — In February 2014, Houzz launched Site Designer, a free website building and publishing tool for home professionals. Websites are connected to a pro’s Houzz profile, “which allow them to easily pull in their images, reviews and other information from their existing profiles.” This feature allows not only to find furniture on the website but also to find the specialists that will set everything up or work on renovation.
Houzz TV — In May 2015, Houzz introduced Houzz TV — Online Videos of Home Remodeling Projects.
Sketch — Houzz introduced Sketch for Android in January 2016. Sketch is also available as a web app. The Sketch feature in the Houzz app makes it even easier to communicate using photos, and to add products from the Houzz Shop to any photo. Choose a picture from among the 14 million-plus photos on Houzz, snap a shot of your own, upload an image from the web or select a Sketch canvas. Add any products from the Houzz Shop. And then write, type and draw on the photos and add stickers to quickly and easily communicate ideas and comments to your design professional, family members and friends.
View in My Room — In February 2016, Houzz introduced View in My Room within its app for iOS and Android that lets users virtually place products from the Houzz Marketplace in their homes before buying.
Commerce API — In March 2016, Houzz announced that it had opened its Commerce API to third party partners, with Shopify as a first point of integration, to make it easier for merchants to sell and manage their inventory on Houzz.
Visual Match — In September 2016, Houzz launched Visual Match, a new visual recognition tool that “uses deep learning technology to analyze more than 11 million home photos on Houzz. Furniture and decor that looks similar to the six million products on the Houzz Marketplace is then surfaced for users to browse”.
View in My Room 3D — In May 2017, Houzz introduced a new tool for its iPhone and iPad app, View in My Room 3D, that allows people to preview over 300,000 products in 3D within the context of their own rooms. With the launch of iOS 11 from Apple in September 2017, Houzz introduced an upgraded version of its 3D AR tool within its app for iPhone and iPad, which lets people see and move 500,000 products in their rooms.
The Houzz App for Android devices was updated with ARCore support in March 2018, enabling users to “place virtual representations of furniture and other home decor items anywhere in their home to see how they would look.»
Houzz Inc., the leading platform for home renovation and design, today introduced its latest augmented reality (AR) feature within its app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices, available for free at the App Store and Google Play Store. The feature, part of Houzz’s View in My Room 3D tool, enables shoppers to virtually cover their floor with tile, true-to-scale.
Houzz Marketing Benefits
Houzz Marketing Benefit #1: Increased Website Traffic
Houzz is a traffic machine. Having said that, since Houzz links a business’s profile to their website (as well as all of their photos), the opportunity to gain an increase in website and blog traffic is potentially substantial.
Houzz Marketing Benefit #2: Increased Exposure to Relevant, Ready Target Market
A huge benefit of Houzz is that it puts a business’s portfolio out in front of a huge audience (global) of relevant consumers. As mentioned previously, Houzz’s user base of over six million users primarily own their homes (89%), are actively making home improvements, and many plan to do a project within the next two years.
The level of exposure to a customer that is in the decision process (or very close to), has a decent income and is actively researching ideas, all from a free listing source, is indeed worth the time and effort of conducting some Houzz marketing.
Houzz Marketing Benefit #3: SEO/SERP Possibilities
When Houzz first came out, many bloggers on the local SEO scene claimed that a link back from Houzz’s directory had little benefit as it was a nofollow link. Many marketing companies beg to differ, and even if it were the case, today Houzz ranks so highly on search engine results pages that businesses can reap the rewards of barnacle seo (latching onto Houzz’s SERP success in SERP results) by creating a profile on the site. Even if exposure was the real benefit over any SERP increases, the spikes in traffic from Houzz have been considerable for businesses who have been watching them in their webmaster tools.
Houzz Marketing Benefit #4: Increased Referrals and Piping Hot Leads
The increased website and blog traffic, as well as the exposure to a professional’s information and work via their Houzz profiles, ideabooks, projects and ultimately photos, have resulted in an increase in leads and referrals. Professionals with reviews on their Houzz profiles are more likely to get hired over those with those who have no reviews, so it is important to build up reviews on the platform.
Houzz Marketing Benefit #5: Free Advertising and PR Exposure
In addition to the photos, projects and ideabooks, professionals with uploaded photos also have the opportunity to be featured in Houzz’s editorial blog for free. What’s better than free press? Houzz’s editorial team ads 10–20 articles a day and uses information on Houzz from pictures and ideabooks, all of which is real work from professionals on Houzz.
Houzz Marketing Benefit #6: Free In-Houzz Marketing Research
- Professionals can utilize many of the free features on Houzz for free market research in numerous ways using Houzz’s Empowered Clients as a test market group by:
- Checking which of the business’s photos and keywords are hot topics. If the photos are getting a lot of traffic and praise, businesses can consider using it on their websites or social media, or even traditional print materials such as brochures.
- Identifying which projects and idea books the business is getting the most hits and interaction on.
- Checking which keywords are doing well in the business’s photos or ideabooks. The business can use those words to check for any keyword opportunities by integrating them on their content on their blogs, website or social media (be sure to check for the search volume of the keywords and level of competition for the blog and website)
- Searching for any related themes while interacting on Houzz’s forum. Similar to keywords on the photos, the questions users are consistently asking the business can be used as potential topics to take back to the business’s blog or make helpful content pieces for.
- Interacting on the forums with potential customers can help a business discover more succinctly exactly who their target persona(s) are to further target their marketing efforts. Why? So the business can build relationships with their customers and win clients quickly by actively trying to help solve their problems and fears.
