Spring is here, and our data finds that home improvement sales increase in spring. Shoppers are not only refreshing their wardrobes for spring, but also their homes. We dug into last year’s data for our Home Improvement retailers to get a better sense of what to help marketers plan for 2018 and beyond.
1. Spring sees sales surge in the Home Improvement category
Compared to January, sales of Home Improvement products increase 30% in April and 32% in May before returning to the same sales volumes as January, in September. After the cold winter months, shoppers may be ready to refresh their homes with new looks and colors.
2. People buy more for home improvement on weekdays, especially Monday
With online shopping making it easy to buy a couch from the couch, Criteo found that shoppers are mostly saving their weekends for pursuits other than home improvement shopping. They’re making purchases mostly during the week, especially on Monday and Tuesday, with purchases steadily declining through the weekend. Compared to Saturday, Monday has 23% more sales in the category.
This indicates that shoppers are perhaps browsing for home improvement during the weekend and finally clicking buy during the week.
3. Home improvement shoppers are multichannel
Shoppers do their research online and visit stores to see their wares in real life. Or they use their phones instore and buy from the website later. While we saw plenty of evidence of multichannel journeys, our data shows that when it comes to order-size, desktop still wins, with average order values of $275 vs. $207 on mobile.
If shoppers are buying on the weekend however, they’re buying on their mobile devices. Overall 34% of sales occur on mobile devices over the weekend compared to just 27% during the week. So people who are buying home improvements over the weekends are more likely to do so from their mobile devices, when they’re out and about.
4. Average order values are twice as high for Home Improvement than for online retail
This might be because home improvement items tend to be bigger ticket items – a couch is likely to cost more than a pair of shoes or a new dress – but it might also indicate that people are willing to spend more on their homes than on other categories, seeing these purchases as investments they’ll get more time with.
Start your campaigns early
For marketers, spring is the time to take advantage of shopping fever. Make sure your campaigns are in-market by early spring to reach shoppers before your competitors, and run them through April and May to maximize sales.
Take advantage of shoppers’ readiness to buy on Mondays and Tuesdays, and plan your campaigns accordingly for maximum exposure throughout the week. Ensure your site on both desktop and mobile are optimized for ease-of-use to increase sales.
Lastly, market to each shopper (not the device), and connect offline and online data sources to create the most relevant ad experiences.
