The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Mobile App Personalisation Made.com

Made.com to boost mobile offering as expansion continues

Author

By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

September 1, 2014 | 4 min read

Online furniture retailer Made.com is planning to focus efforts on developing its mobile offering as it continues to roll out a series of websites in international markets.

The pure-play retailer, which recently installed cloud-tag technology to let customers digitally interact with physical products in its showroom, does not currently have an app but is planning to create one that will offer consumers an experience that is “slightly different” to other furniture retailers.

Annabel Kilner, Made.com UK country manager, who is speaking at The Drum’s Joy of CX event in October, admitted to The Drum that Made.com is “not particularly good” at mobile, with the focus currently on its tablet and desktop offering.

“We know that we are not particularly good at mobile, we really need to focus on that and as a business we don’t. Our biggest challenge is making it [the user experience] consistent across all devices.

“I think there are challenges there about what apps we create for mobile which is obviously becoming more and more relevant… we will start to look at it in 2015 and that will be the main focus. Ultimately we are a category where it is much harder to buy on mobile but we still want that level of engagement there. It’s about offering something slightly different on the mobile side.”

Made.com is also looking to place a greater focus on personalisation across its website and marketing output. Kilner said that currently, each visitor to the site will have “pretty much” the same journey, which is something the brand hopes to change to improve the customer experience.

“We want to be able to give very different messages to the new customer versus the returning customer, so we’re looking at how we can get more sophisticated with that,” she said. “We do a little bit on our category pages but that’s it at the moment and we would like to do it site-wide.

“We’re already working with a company called Tumra to do personalisation but it takes time to find the right algorithm and embed that across the whole site, but we will slowly add it into newsletters, into the home page and into baskets: there are lots of different areas we can do it.”

As part of the drive, Made.com is planning to send out emails to its customers which will target those that have been looking at a particular collection on the site.

Meanwhile the retailer is also planning to expand its recently launched Unboxed social networking platform, designed to encourage consumers to connect with existing Made.com customers in their neighbourhood.

The platform, still in beta, has so far seen promising traffic rates and while statistics have yet to be revealed Grimshaw said that there is scope to evolve it as the community grows.

Made.com is also set to expand its product offering later this year with the launch of the linen brand Bed and Bath and a range of children’s furniture, and will open a website in Germany in the latter end of the year.

The retailer recently returned to TV screens in its second ad campaign which launched at the end of August.

Tickets for the The Joy of CX and more information on the speakers and venue can be found on the The Joy of CX website.

Mobile App Personalisation Made.com

More from Mobile App

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +