Home Depot Seeds Sampling program doubles conversion rates

Home Depot is a household name. The retailer carries over one million products for DIY customers, professional contractors, and installation businesses. Home Depot Canada has been innovating its e-commerce store with Bazaarvoice for many years. When Bazaarvoice has a new feature or service, the Home Depot Canada team is quick to take advantage of it. They understand the impact user-generated content (UGC) has on sales. Customers who interact with UGC on Home Depot are over 2X more likely to convert.

“UGC is becoming increasingly important,” said Gabriela da Silva, Senior Brand Advocate Analyst at Home Depot Canada. “It’s no longer a ‘nice to have.’ It’s a necessity. We see our site as a research tool, so even if people come into the store, they still use their phones to see ratings and reviews and make a final decision. UGC is important for the health of the whole business, not just e-commerce.”

Last year, Home Depot Canada decided to take advantage of Bazaarvoice’s Managed Sampling capabilities to help the store’s brands increase UGC on its product pages. In January 2020, the Home Depot CA Seeds program was born. “Bazaarvoice has been a great partner,” said Michelle Young, Senior E-commerce Specialist, User Generated Content “The Client Success team has been awesome, and Bazaarvoice has also helped us co-create marketing materials, like presentations and guides, to engage more vendors in our UGC programs.”

Inspiring more confident purchases with Home Depot Canada Seeds

Seeds Sampling is a review seeding program that puts the brand’s products in the hands of Home Depot Canada’s most loyal shoppers in exchange for honest reviews. Home Depot helps its brands select which items to sample and which audiences to target.

Watch an overview of the Seeds program here:

“When we’re targeting specific audiences, we’re able to get more quality reviews and more photo reviews as well,” said Young. “We know that having visual content available for the customer to see is becoming increasingly important to confidence and conversion rates.”

Home Depot Canada vendors are encouraged to use the Seeds sampling program strategically throughout the year to generate UGC when needed, for seasonal, regional, exclusive, and new product ranges. There’s two primary audiences for the Seeds program who contribute UGC: The “Pro” members, who are experts in their trade like electricians and plumbers, and the “DIY” members, who are home enthusiasts.

Philips WiZ is a Seeds sampling success

Philips WiZ, a brand Home Depot carries, used Seeds to create buzz for four new products launched in September 2020. Home Depot Canada sent out the new WiZ products for sampling in exchange for ratings and reviews. The goal was to raise awareness about the products for the upcoming holiday season.

“With them creating products for a smart home, it’s a growing industry with a lot of competition,” said Young.

The sampling campaign worked. Those four new products saw more reviews on their product pages in one month than any existing WiZ product. The conversion rate for these four products was 68% higher than the rest of the WiZ products that weren’t part of the Seeds program.

The other goal of the sampling campaign was to encourage repeat purchasing from product testers.

“Once one person purchases an item within a smart home ecosystem, it encourages them to buy more within that ecosystem,” said Young. “It was good for people to test out the ease of using Philips. Then, once they see that benefit, they’ll want to buy more for their house versus buying an item within another ecosystem.”

The program was so successful in providing UGC for WiZ product pages that the brand has asked Home Depot for more sampling campaigns in the future.

“The Home Depot Seeds Program boosted our product impressions and conversions in a very short amount of time. It was a quick and easy way to increase traffic online. We would surely use this service again for future projects,” said a representative from Philips.

The future of Seeds and UGC at Home Depot

Since launching Seeds, Home Depot Canada has had several vendors reach out hoping to participate in the program.

“Reviews are pretty top of mind as we talk to vendors more and more and educate them on how important UGC is,” said Young. “We give them Seeds as an opportunity to increase their ratings and reviews coverage. Without Seeds, we rely on the vendor to provide those reviews for us. Seeds is a low-effort/cost way for our vendors to gain more UGC without having to set up their own sampling program.”

If your brand wants help increasing reviews and conversions on homedepot.ca, get in touch.

UGC fuels Home Depot own private label success

Home Depot Canada also takes advantage of Seeds to create awareness for its own private label products.

“Within our private brands business, we’re looking to increase our review coverage and increase brand awareness, particularly within our new and innovative product ranges” said Young.

Home Depot Canada and Bazaarvoice are looking forward to continuing to innovate together for years to come. Get in touch now to learn more.

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