The changing retail landscape

Covid has further accelerated the consumer shift to digital-first within the retail industry, building on the momentum that had already driven tangible change to consumer behavior.

This has compelled retailers to prioritise investment into their omnichannel strategies and capabilities to ensure they maintain engagement with consumers across all channels in a post-Covid retail environment.

50% of consumers said their shopping behaviour is unlikely to revert to pre-Covid routines.

Omnichannel consumers have high expectations across all touchpoints, with 90% using smart phones while they shop in stores, nearly a third purchasing directly via social media and 90% pre-researching goods online before making a purchase decision.

With the lifetime value of omnichannel customers being 1.6x higher than single-channel users, there is a huge prize available for retailers that move with this shifting landscape and a significant challenge for those that are left behind.

Creating a compelling digital proposition

Consumers' expectations of online retailers have shifted in line with the experiences they have in the real world.

As a result, online players must now defy the conventions that have held the online space back for so long by offering: 

• Benefits over features
• Experience over selling
• Curation of a solution over price and promotion
• Shopping by solution over shopping by aisle

Our solution

With this in mind, THG Ingenuity has sought to bring inspirational selling to the forefront, placing content at the heart of the customer journey. We set out to create a customer-first, digitally enabled Homebase store based on the following principles:

Inspire: Helping consumers to imagine new possibilities in their home with rich and interactive content, curated solutions and innovative shopping features.

Enable: Transforming consumers’ dreams into a reality through a frictionless shopping experience.

Enjoy: Providing a platform for customers to share their achievements and dream bigger.

Delivering a major platform migration

THG Ingenuity partnered with Homebase to develop a new website on THG Ingenuity's proprietary end-to-end ecommerce platform, Elysium.

This gives Homebase full access to features like special offer engines, personalization, AI-driven recommendations and search, and real-time data-driven insights for optimization.

THG Ingenuity also provided digital marketing capabilities in SEO and CRM to drive consumer experience and on-site conversion metrics.

Following an accelerated program of transformation, which condensed an original three-year timeline into nine months, THG Ingenuity successfully launched the Homebase site and saw an immediate uplift in the following KPIs compared to pre-migration performance levels:

Looking back, three years on

Revisiting the replatform three years on, the results remain positive, and the key KPIs continue to be met and exceeded:

Looking ahead

Following the successful site launch, THG Ingenuity and Homebase are working together to optimize Homebase's customer experience on-site and continue delivering new and exciting features and content.

The partnership also focused on omnichannel optimization and innovation, with projects including omnichannel fulfilment, EPOS and cross-channel gifting and visual merchandising experiences. 

Earlier this year, we spoke to Homebase's CFO Andy Coleman to discuss how THG Ingenuity is working with the home improvement giant to drive its DTC transformation agenda. 

Click here to watch the on-demand webinar.