This is the first installment of our ‘What If’ Series‚ where our development specialists question and discuss the current opportunities in the market for digital improvement.
Over the past couple of months‚ we challenged our Mobile and UX teams to put their minds to solving the world’s problems. We wanted to pick the brains of some of hedgehog lab’ creative teams and identify opportunities for digital innovation‚ considering the logistics involved‚ and mapping out what a solution might look like.
Why B&Q?
Our team decided to look at the B&Q application‚ thinking about how it could be expanded to account for sustainability and provide insight into eco-friendly home renovations.
In making sustainable DIY products and advice more accessible‚ customers would be able to make more informed decisions about the products they choose. This gives them the power to make eco-conscious decisions around their home and could have a significant impact on our fight against climate change.
Primarily an e-commerce platform‚ the B&Q application is currently used to allow customers to view their stock‚ place online orders for delivery and click and collect.
With sustainability becoming a rising concern amongst consumers‚ our team envisioned an in-app function that could allow you to monitor how eco-friendly your house or flat is‚ providing recommendations of easy changes to make‚ allowing you to set a monthly budget for eco-friendly home improvements‚ and giving the user a direct route to purchasing.
Improvements are demarcated and categorised by pricing‚ giving users the opportunity to make multiple smaller adjustments to their living setup each month‚ or completely overhaul a room in one go. In time‚ this could be expanded to account for the sustainability of the manufacturer of the product‚ the creation of personalised discounts for bundles of products and yearly rewinds.
The ‘My Rooms’ Hub
The My Rooms hub allows users an overview of their home setup‚ with a percentage figure used to identify how ‘green’ their space is. This allows them to track individual progress across rooms as well as their entire home from a centralised dashboard. This also means that even smaller changes are credited fairly in improving a home’s overall sustainability.
Users can also learn more practical tips through the DIY guides in this section. The idea for the expanded B&Q App is not only to act as a place for selling their products‚ but to act as an all-in-one tool to educate and provide the means for home-owners to make eco-informed choices.
Setting Up Your Home
The process begins with a simple quiz about the user’s current home setup- this includes (amongst other things) the type of house that they live in‚ the number of bedrooms‚ the insulation status and the type of light bulbs being used.
With this baseline set‚ we can begin to account for the percentages shown in the dashboard‚ and populate lists of products that would improve emissions sinkholes.
Progress Checklist
Tapping into an individual room view‚ you see personalised product lists with the option to add them to your basket. Each product purchase improves the percentage rating of a room.
In our recent report ‘The Changing Face of Mobile Technology’‚ we found that 60% of shoppers use their mobiles to research purchases and make decisions‚ and more than half of all retail sales are made using a mobile phone.
An expansion to the B&Q App would relieve a major pain-point for DIY enthusiasts who are trying to make eco-conscious efforts to improve their home. They would not only be able to identify opportunities for improvement‚ but purchase and track the effect of that purchase in the same place.
Product
Users can browse listings and compare options‚ noting the difference it could have to their overall score.
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