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<\/p>\nWayfair.com is a mass market retailer in the e-commerce space: its business model and primary value proposition depends on offering customers over seven million diverse furniture and houseware SKUs across hundreds of distinct product categories.\u00a0 The brand sells\u00a0a myriad of product styles, prices and quality levels, touting the mantra: \u201cWayfair offers a Zillion things home\u201d [i]. As \u201cthe largest online-only furniture retailer in the U.S.,\u201d Wayfair\u2019s highly digital, inventory-light operating model is critical in delivering on this promise [ii]. The company brought in $2.25 billion in revenues in 2015 [ii], and actively promotes digital transformation.<\/p>\n
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On the user interface front, Wayfair has used digital transformation to enhance the customer shopping experience.\u00a0 Furniture is a challenging product category both to buy and sell online.\u00a0 Not only do these items tend to be higher price-point pieces that require longer consideration periods, but they\u2019re also characterized by a high-touch shopping brick-and-mortar experience, where customers can see, try, and measure products before committing to a purchase [vi].<\/p>\n
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Wayfair “End Tables” category page filtered to items classified as “Glam”<\/p>\n
To simulate this interactive shopping experience, Wayfair\u2019s engineering teams have worked to create a variety of avenues for customers. To simplify what could be an overwhelming website, the company has developed a complex set of criteria upon which customers can refine the assortment displayed on a given product category page: these filter sets include intuitive qualities like size, material, color and price, as well as more subjective attributes like style [iii]. \u00a0While such navigation is not a revolutionary feature, given the scale of Wayfair\u2019s product assortment and the sheer size of its pool of over 7,000 vendor partners, achieving this level of SKU tagging is highly impressive, especially given that the company collects over 100 pieces of information about each individual SKU on site [ii].\u00a0 This push to digitalize every nuance of each product has been a major contributor to the company\u2019s low 5% return rate, as customers better understand the products they\u2019re ordering [ii].<\/p>\n
Wayfair’s Idea Board Functionality<\/p>\n An additional layer of innovation comes in the form of the brand\u2019s \u201cIdea Boards\u201d.\u00a0 Akin to Pinterest boards, customers are able to tag items of interest as they browse the Wayfair website, and when inside a board, view their selections together in aggregate, to vet for aesthetic compatibility or to save the items for the future.\u00a0 In early 2016 Wayfair reported that 4 million users of this new technology had saved over $3.8 billion worth of products to their Idea Boards.\u00a0 The boards already drove an impressive 31% of Wayfair app revenue [iv].<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wayfair\u2019s recent foray into virtual and augmented reality via its focused team of five employees, Wayfair Next, has begun to set the company apart from competitors [vi].\u00a0 The team has worked to create a program called WayfairView that will allow customers to port the products they see online into their own living spaces [v]. One feature would allow Wayfair app users to capture their space on camera via a special device, such as Google\u2019s Project Tango tablet, and digitally superimpose Wayfair products into their space as they focus on various parts of the room [vi].\u00a0 For even more interactivity, the company is working to launch a virtual reality feature where, wearing a headset such as the Rift by Oculus, users can interact with a three-dimensional living space populated with Wayfair products [vi].\u00a0 The launch of this technology will take time, as in order to be made into a three dimensional representation, each product must be photographed from all angles on a rotating turntable; a process which takes between five to ten minutes per product, and requires 3 gigabytes\u2019 worth of still photos [vi].\u00a0 Once scaled, however, the project will have many potential applications, including use for\u00a0interior design partnerships as well as product placement and purchasing capabilities within video games and similar software [vi].<\/p>\n This fall, Wayfair also launched an innovative new television show, \u201cThe Way Home,\u201d on Lifetime.\u00a0 The show provides customers with helpful interior design tips, and every single item on the show is available for sale on Wayfair.com through limited-time sales including the highlighted products [vii].\u00a0 In conjunction with the show, Wayfair has launched a virtual showroom app called IdeaSpace, where customers can browse perfectly styled spaces and virtually interact with the featured products [viii]. \u00a0This clever pairing of television and high-tech , interactive commerce is an excellent manifestation of the company\u2019s transformative thinking in the digital space, and surely indicative of more such innovation to come.\u00a0 As I think about Wayfair\u2019s future in this arena, I hope they\u2019re able to retrofit these exciting innovations for compatibility with more pervasive forms of tech such as Apple devices: at the moment, ownership of the specific complementary tech items is going to be a costly hurdle for customers to surpass, and I worry this friction will lead to limited short-term adoption.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Word Count: 797<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n i. Wayfair, \u201cAbout Wayfair,\u201d https:\/\/www.wayfair.com\/about\/<\/a>, accessed November 2016.<\/p>\n ii. Khadeeja Safdar, \u201cWhy Wayfair Inc. Thinks It Can Be the Amazon of Furniture,\u201d The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, October 2, 2016, [http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/why-wayfair-inc-thinks-it-can-be-the-amazon-of-furniture-1475460361<\/a>], accessed November 17, 2016.<\/p>\n iii. Wayfair, \u201cEnd Tables,\u201d https:\/\/www.wayfair.com\/End-Tables-C414604.html<\/a>, accessed November 2016.<\/p>\n iv. Carpenter, Jane, \u201cInspirational Idea Boards on Wayfair.com Drive 31 Percent of Mobile App Revenue for Online Retailer,\u201d Business Wire<\/em>, March 22, 2016, [http:\/\/search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu\/docview\/1774755519?accountid=11311], Accessed November 17, 2016.<\/p>\n v. Elizabeth Woyke, \u201cHow Stores Will Use Augmented Reality to Make You Buy More Stuff,\u201d MIT Technology Review, <\/em>June 17, 2016, [https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/s\/601664\/how-stores-will-use-augmented-reality-to-make-you-buy-more-stuff\/<\/a>], Accessed November 17, 2016.<\/p>\n vi. Scott Kirsner, \u201cAdding a level of reality to online shopping,\u201d Boston Globe<\/em>, May 5, 2016, [https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/business\/2016\/05\/05\/adding-level-reality-online-shopping\/wXRlzWBdGIo7j5LO8sOg5K\/story.html<\/a>], accessed November 17, 2016.<\/p>\n vii.\u00a0 Madeline Bilis, \u201cWayfair Is Launching Its Own TV Show on Lifetime,\u201d Boston Magazine, October 19, 2016, [http:\/\/www.bostonmagazine.com\/property\/blog\/2016\/10\/19\/wayfair-tv-show-lifetime\/], Accessed November 17, 2016.<\/p>\n
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