Home Depot Mobile App Leverages Augmented Reality For In-Store Product Search
With tablets decreasing in size, smartphones getting larger and consumer comfort levels with both continuing to rise, mobile-enhanced shopping is becoming more of a norm than ever. If retailers haven’t already started capitalizing on providing a more streamlined mobile experience for their customers, now is the time to get on board.
Home Depot has seen success with its mobile app, which helps shoppers find product in stores faster through augmented reality, visual search and real-time inventory availability. The app senses when the shopper enters a Home Depot store and switches to an in-store mode that allows them to locate items down to the exact aisle.
"Our customers have consistently told us [the app] makes it easier to find product in store," said Matt Jones, General Manager of Mobile at Home Depot, in a statement. "Customer data was really our north star."
The home improvement retailer saw 1.5 billion website visits in 2015 — half of which came from mobile devices. Home Depot experienced 941,000 mobile Web page views in a single hour on Black Friday alone.
Brick-and-mortar-heavy retailers should definitely work on their efforts to expand smartphone shopping options. If done right, apps can be the answer. A study by Forrester and RetailMeNot found that 60% of consumers who use their smartphone to shop online have no more than two retailer-specific apps, and 21% don’t have any at all. Customers demand speed, convenience and personalization, but if retailers can offer a unique mobile app experience, it will pay off as it has for Home Depot.
Mobile spending in November and December 2015 alone spiked 59%, and for Valentine’s Day 2016, shoppers relied on their mobile devices to complete their last-minute purchases. In fact, a survey of digital sales trends indicated mobile orders increased 49% during early February compared to the last two weeks of January.
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