Key Stats & Takeaways
- 30+ new insights on Furniture & Home Decor shopper habits and preferences
- 1,598 US online shoppers surveyed in this quantitative UX study
- Furniture and home decor shoppers prioritize fit confidence and delivery factors, and take a long-term view when making purchase decisions
At Baymard, we’ve just released new Quantitative Insights into people who shop on “Furniture & Home Decor” sites, expanding our understanding of the habits and preferences of online shoppers in this category.
These insights are visualizations based on survey data that supplement and support our large-scale UX research findings and benchmarking of the Furniture & Home Decor industry.
The 30+ insights address the furniture and home decor online shopping experience, spanning a breadth of topics: online trip drivers, product evaluation for high-consideration purchases, fit and size confidence, reviews usage, delivery expectations for heavy or bulky items, return concerns, and store visits.
Some of the charts also explore sub-segments of the broader audience such as augmented reality (AR) users and why they evaluate products using “View in Room” tools and the level of accuracy they expect from AR.
These Quantitative Insights empower you to align stakeholders through objective, survey-backed data, streamline A/B testing with high-potential hypotheses, and discover and address industry-specific UX challenges.
In this article, we’ll highlight 3 high-level findings that reflect how shoppers evaluate and purchase furniture and home decor online:
- Confidence in size and fit is a core challenge
- Delivery details are a primary part of the purchase decision
- Reviews help users assess how products will hold up over time
Confidence in Size and Fit Is a Core Challenge
Written dimensions (49%) and dimensions images (42%) are among the most essential product page content types for helping Furniture & Home Decor shoppers determine whether an item will fit in their space before purchasing online (see Quantitative Insight #HF037 for an interactive version of this graph alongside key findings and actionable insights).
Furniture and home decor shoppers are often trying to answer a high-stakes question that is difficult to correct after purchase: whether a product will fit within their space.
This means furniture and decor shoppers must go beyond aesthetics and features to also understand a product’s scale and spatial fit within their home, often using just the product page content.
According to our survey of online furniture and home decor shoppers, the most essential content types for fit confidence are written dimensions (49%) and “Dimension” images (42%).
But our survey also shows that dimensions aren’t enough, as users rely on not just concrete measurements, but also on visual context that helps them understand how an item fits within real spaces.
Thus, Furniture & Home Decor product pages should support both measurement-based and context-based evaluation, offering content like reviewer photos (38%), “In Scale” images, and “Lifestyle” images (38%) that help users judge scale more intuitively.
Delivery Details Are a Primary Part of the Purchase Decision
Delivery costs, transparency, and logistics-related details are among the most important factors for Furniture & Home Decor shoppers when ordering online (see Quantitative Insight #HF047 for an interactive version of this graph alongside key findings and actionable insights).
Delivery is not just a logistical concern, but a deciding factor for furniture and home decor shoppers as to whether a purchase is viable in the first place.
Because these products are often heavy, bulky, or delicate, shoppers must factor in delivery logistics, timing, and cost much earlier in the purchase process than they might in other categories.
This can include considerations like fulfillment service levels (e.g., threshold vs. white-glove), delivery timing, and return or cancellation policies.
Thus, Furniture & Home Decor sites should ensure that key delivery details are clearly communicated early in the journey, including total order cost, so users know the full price before committing.
Sites should also provide estimated delivery dates near the “Buy” section, and offer visibility into delivery logistics for large item deliveries.
Reviews Are Critical for Evaluating Long-Term Product Performance
Furniture and home decor shoppers use customer reviews as a key source of evidence about a product’s durability, comfort, quality, and ultimately whether it lived up to expectations (see Quantitative Insight #HF040 for an interactive version of this graph alongside key findings and actionable insights).
Most Furniture & Home Decor shoppers say they use reviews to evaluate long-term quality and durability when shopping for these products online.
That behavior makes sense in an industry where purchases are often relatively expensive, expected to last for years, and difficult to return once delivered and assembled.
In that context, reviews become a key source of evidence about durability, comfort (see #HF041), and quality, aspects that are only revealed through use over time and can’t be easily assessed from site-provided product page content.
With that, Furniture & Home Decor sites should ensure that reviews are easy to find and scan, and help users to locate relevant feedback to their specific concerns by offering search within reviews or keyword filtering.
Sites can also help users quickly evaluate key attributes like comfort and durability by surfacing a small number of contextual review subscores when relevant.
31 Quantitative Insights to Inform Furniture & Home Decor UX Improvements
In addition to the 3 insights presented here, all 31 Furniture & Home Decor UX survey insights are available on Baymard along with our Quantitative Insights for general ecommerce on Awareness & Product Discovery, Consideration & Purchase Behavior, Checkout & Post-Purchase, Loyalty, and other industry-specific studies.
These are just 3 of the insights from our Furniture & Home Decor quantitative study.
Read the other 28 insights to get an in-depth understanding of the habits and preferences of furniture and home decor shoppers online.
Use these insights along with our Furniture & Home Decor UX guidelines based on observed user behavior to inform your UX design decisions for your Furniture & Home Decor ecommerce store.
Note that we also offer Quantitative Insights for general ecommerce on Awareness & Product Discovery, Consideration & Purchase Behavior, Checkout & Post-Purchase, and Loyalty, many of which are also relevant to furniture and home decor sites.
Getting access: all 30+ Furniture & Home Decor quantitative insights are available today within Baymard. (If you already have access through an account, open the Furniture & Home Decor quantitative study).
If you want to know how your Furniture & Home Decor desktop and mobile site performs and compares, then learn more about getting Baymard to conduct a Furniture & Home Decor UX audit of your site.
