With the imminent arrival of our first baby, myself and my husband have been finally getting round to decorating the house we moved into more than a year ago.  Without a car, him commuting up to London every day and me getting bigger and bigger, we have been reliant on online suppliers and home delivery services to help us source what we need, which has been a fascinating exercise for me in how different sectors approach their online customer service, delivery and post purchase engagement.

At Leapfrogg, we believe that securing sales isn’t just about having a great product and a good website; it is concerned with understanding your prospects and customers at every stage of their buying journey from reach through to advocacy.

There are lots of different elements of the digital marketing mix that an online brand can do to tap into their customers as they move through these different stages of this buying cycle, which I will highlight with a recent personal experience.

One of the most impressive online services I used to help get the house decorated is Wallpaper Direct.  Not immediately a site that screams ‘premium retail’ at you, but everything about the online service they offer is slick, easy and jammed packed with added value.

Acquisition & conversion:

The first gold star I mentally awarded to them was making it easy for me to find what I was looking for.  For those uninitiated, unless you’ve seen a design you really like, looking for wallpaper can be a nightmare.  Wallpaper Direct enables you to search in a variety of ways: colour, brand, type of design and features of the wallpaper.  While searching, you can save ones you like in a wish-list.  At the end of a search, you can very easily order A4 sized samples to be sent to you.  Unlike many other sites, there is no limit on the number of samples you order.  You can only get a limited number for free each time, but you can order as many as you like in one go.

They further impressed me when it came to ordering the correct number of rolls.  I can’t lie to you, reader, I can plumb in a toilet and put up shelves, but the patience you need to match up patterns to wallpaper is beyond my capabilities – so I’ve never even tried it.  Having the tool within the site to input the size of your walls / area to be wallpapered is really useful and enables you to order the right number of rolls first time.  Should you require “talking down” from any wallpaper induced hysteria, they have excellent telephone support to double check you’re making the right purchases and to handle any queries or returns.

The delivery service was also excellent.  From ordering, the wallpaper arrived quickly and my expectations were managed beautifully by both emails and texts detailing the date and time of delivery and very easy steps to follow should I want to change delivery options.

I was also thrilled with how the wallpaper arrived.  It was boxed up with a handle on top of the package to enable me to carry it home easily.  One of the brands of wallpaper I ordered was also gift wrapped with stickers and tissue paper!

Wallpaper Direct may not have the brand presence of a luxury interiors brand, but if one of the hallmarks of a premium brand is an ability to understand a customer’s pain points and offer quality service and user experience, then for me, they score very highly indeed.  They made what could have been a real chore, a pleasure and I would have no hesitation in using their services again and indeed recommending them to others.

Advocacy:

If making the actual process of searching for and ordering wallpaper fun and easy wasn’t enough to convert new users to a sale, there is a lot of added value throughout the site all designed to win your trust and encourage you to buy.  The news and reviews section, although not third party generated, is clearly visible from the home page:

Reach:

The brand also generates it own content to help inspire users – some thing Leapfrogg believes vital to help brand build with new customers in their ‘reach and research’ phase of the buying cycle.  Producing a stand-alone and brand neutral online magazine to help customers make decisions about the products and services you sell is a great way of exposing your expertise in a field and inspire purchase.

All in all, a great service that has ultimately secured the best accolade you can from a happy customer – advocacy!