3D Room Planner 101 v2

 

The Marxent 3D Room Planner with Design from Photo is the 3D Room Planner of choice for the top furniture and home improvement retailers. We speak daily with  retailers around the world and consistently hear the same question: “How can we measure ROI on our 3D Room Planner investment?” It’s clear that they want to know exactly how their investment in 3D will pay off. 

3D Room Planner is a best-in-class self-service 3D planning tool, but it is also an impactful solution that helps retailers solve big problems such as bringing online transaction sizes up to in-store levels, customer experience improvements,  reducing returns, and providing self-service design and full-room add-to-cart to shoppers.

How can you calculate the ROI on a 3D Room Planner investment? There are a few different ways to approach a 3D Room Planner ROI calculation. We have found that the best place to start is by looking at average order value, shopper engagement, and the ability to track KPIs through actionable analytics. 

In this article, we’ll cover 3D Room Planner ROI contributions related to:

If you’re ready for a custom ROI analysis, contact us.

Average Order Value (AOV) 

3D Room Planner with Design from Photo solves a big problem for retailers. People are shopping online more, but online transactions are typically much smaller than in-store transactions. It is easier to price shop across retailers when shopping online and consumers show little loyalty. 3D Room Planner is designed with “whole room” retail in mind. It is the perfect opportunity to upsell home decor and additional pieces, in addition to upselling premium finishes and customizations. There is no other way to create and configure an entire room of semi-custom, buyable furniture or kitchen cabinets online in a self-service environment – and it makes a difference! 

3D Room Planner clients see on average more items per transaction, larger and more expensive items per transaction, and on average:

  • 100% to 200% increase in average order value (AOV)
  • 15% to 30% reduction in returns
  • 2% to 5% ATC rate

Shopper Engagement

Large scale, high-value items are moving online and consumer behavior 3D Room Planner with Design from Photo is the first fully connected self-service retail shopping experience. Engagement can be reflected across many metrics, but the ultimate demonstration of engagement is time spent on a site, interacting with a brand, and with relevant products. 

It is instrumental in keeping online and omnichannel shoppers engaged in the purchase process with a single retailer – from inspiration to transaction and ultimately to advocacy. 3D Room Planner contributes to factors such as time spent with a single retailer, psychological ownership, and advocacy on social media.  This section explains the customer buying journey for configurable home products and the role of 3D Room Planner in taking a shopper from inspiration to transaction and coming full circle by providing the shopper with content for social media advocacy.

Purchasing more of the catalog, building more of the whole room. Minecraft for moms. Exposure to more of your catalog as they go straight from inspiration, design from photo = higher conversions

Design from Photo is leading to better ATC rates and early indications are that they also lead to higher conversion rates.  

Customer Buying Cycle for Configurable Home Products

Once a shopper recognizes that it is time to buy new furniture, remodel a kitchen, or add a deck to their home. they start looking for inspiration. Once they’ve decided that the time is right to start planning their project, they embark on a journey from Inspiration to Transaction and if they’re happy with the outcome, it results in advocacy. 

Inspiration to Transaction to Advocacy Buying Cycle

 

Inspiration

Inspiration can happen in a flurry of activity or slowly over time. During the inspiration phase, over 80 percent of home project shoppers start looking for ideas on Pinterest or Instagram to look for ideas, trends, and to begin to form their opinions and preferences. Many also look at retailer websites, retail stores, shelter publications, or search on unbranded terms (such as “farmhouse kitchen” or  “kitchen trends”l”) to garner ideas. They may create Pinboards on Pinterest or track ideas in other ways.

Exploration

In the Exploration phase, shoppers start their hunt for products and solutions, and often in a variety of ways. .  Most shoppers start with preferences informed by the inspiration phase and then move to fit and price. Exploration can involve looking at hundreds of different products while the individual imagines how their final choices might work together to create a finished project. This is traditionally where product page-oriented search advertising, SEO, and salespeople play an important role. During the exploration phase, shoppers may discover Design from Photo images in the inspiration section of your website, on product pages, on Pinterest, or when they initiate a 3d Room Planner session. 

Experience

The experience phase is where 3D Room Planner starts to shine, building time spent on your website and engaging with your merchandise. Shoppers discover that they can add real, buyable products into their floor plan by simply tapping on inspirational photos and adding them to an e-commerce cart. With 3D Room Planner, shoppers can go directly from the exploration phase into a customized experience where they make products their own by placing them into a customized floor plan.

Transaction

Shoppers create a merchandised scene directly from photos. This essential departure from Product Page-based e-commerce removes friction from the sale of multiple items within a single project. Instead of finding a range of products, all from different retailers, the 3D Room Commerce experience offered by Marxent’s 3D Room Planner allows the customer to design, review, and transact an entire room full of products with just a few clicks. A shorter, faster purchase cycle 

Advocacy

Once a project has been created, it can be rendered into a sharable photo-similar image. The renderings can be used for social sharing, completing the virtuous circle of social media from research to contribution, or a brand-watermarked image can be shared with social networks. Your marketing team can also create renders of rooms created in 3D Room Planner for sharing on Social Media, providing reach through a constant flow of fresh, relevant content that is tied to current trends. There are many ways to measure the value of advocacy and each company approaches it differently. 

 

Actionable Analytics

As the sale of large-scale, customizable products moves online and the consumer buying journey changes, there are many unknowns. Between the moments of purchase trigger and transaction, sits the messy middle. They know who their customers are, they know that they convert or don’t convert but the ‘why’ is missing.

The 3D Room Planner dashboard offers a wealth of insight that can be used to plan your 3D content investment based on sales data, measure performance, and influence broader purchasing and merchandising decisions. Retailers are actively using these data insights to inform their buying, merchandising, and marketing decisions.  The 3D Room Planner analytics package includes:

Track KPIs

The Marxent Analytics KPI dashboard for 3D Room Planner offers an entirely new way to expand online marketing. Rich dashboards with actionable insights are included with every app subscription. KPIs are available for session volume, conversion rate, add to cart, revenue, number of projects, items per project, and more. 

Analyze conversions

Get a micro, detailed view of conversions and what contributes, all the way down to the individual project and specific collections or items. Get insight into the projects that shoppers are building, the products they love and those that are added to an e-commerce cart, how long they spend in the tool, and the projects that lead to conversion. 

Identify high-performing categories, products, and brands

Follow the user journey from inspiration-to-transaction, and get a macro view of what’s driving success. See which products and styles are most popular and understand clearly which categories and products lead to transactions. 

Get inspirational image insights

Learn which inspirational images resonate with customers and lead to more elaborate designs, more saved projects, more transactions, and higher add-to-cart values. Use this data to optimize your inspirational image collection and in-app product mix and merchandising strategy.   

Reveal remarketing opportunities

Unfinished projects are warm leads. Help shoppers finish their unfinished and abandoned projects when they create a floorplan and add products to a room but don’t complete a transaction. 

Ready to find out what your ROI on a 3D Room Planner would be? Contact us today to request a complimentary 3D Room Planner ROI calculation, contact us today.

Actionable Analytics Infographic