Getting Comfortable with Digital

The home and garden sector is in the wave of an ecommerce boom. Consumer discretionary spending previously allocated for travel, dining, and other outside entertainment has shifted to in-home spending, where home office furniture and at-home gym equipment are now primary purchase products. Due to the increased time spent at home, consumers can complete unfinished projects and take on new renovations and redecorating tasks, all to improve—and update—life at home.

Similarly, ecommerce brand leaders are faced with the need to refresh their digital experience to meet the global surge in online shopping, particularly in the furniture space where in-store has been the primary shopping channel. Brands like La-Z-Boy, a manufacturer and distributor of a diverse line of sofas, sleeper sofas, stationary chairs, and lift chairs, are expected to offer personalized, pain-free digital experiences to increasingly digital-first consumers. But the iconic brand was feeling uncomfortable with its current customer experience.

La-Z-Boy has long been dominant in brick-and-mortar retail. The brand’s showrooms inspire shoppers, primarily women and older consumers, through effortless browsing and compelling merchandised displays of its quality-crafted products. But online, La-Z-Boy was experiencing a high rate of site abandonment, along with a growing number of calls into its customer service department. Customers were confused by product searches that were unreliable due to limited filter options and product images too difficult to discern one from another. The iconic retailer, best known for its innovative, signature upholstered recliners, deployed a consumer study soliciting feedback to help determine critical customer pain points as its key points of focus to drive its new strategy.

Upon review of the results from the study, La-Z-Boy determined it needed a strong, dynamic digital strategy to help sustain future growth, increase customer engagement, and align with its in-store experience. This endeavor would need to include a more modern, guided ecommerce site experience and increased usability across its massive product line—all with an eye toward telling the La-Z-Boy story. The brand partnered with Astound to draft and implement this user interface and user experience redesign and help mitigate customer pain points identified in the study.

The key aspects of the new digital strategy included replicating the seamlessness of shopping in a La-Z-Boy showroom online, a fresher, more modern site look and feel, and increased usability. To help the brand achieve these goals, Astound redesigned the home page, category landing pages, product listings pages, and product detail pages. The sectional configuration page was updated to improve usability by creating a guided, stepped process to help minimize distractions and potential abandonment while key personalization features were added to the My Account page.

Excessive page scrolling due to insufficient filter options was a noted customer frustration. Astound introduced more specific filters to help customers easily cull down products along with subcategory pages to alleviate unnecessary page scrolling. Consumer feedback also indicated that product images were crowded and too small to distinguish important product details necessary to make an informed purchasing decision, a trait crucial to brands in the furniture category selling online.

La-Z-Boy’s new customer-centric digital commerce strategy is underpinned by an overall improvement in site performance. Astound implemented an elegant modular approach that offers customers more personalization and enhanced online accessibility for people with disabilities, therefore maintaining compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). La-Z-Boy enjoys easier back-end updating and smoother development with Astound’s ongoing support while shoppers now experience a more compelling, seamless, and responsive website with relatively faster page loading speeds.