House Envy : a Bing Digital Case Study

Their Story…

House Envy’s vintage-inspired homewares would not look out of place on a ‘dream home’ Pinterest board. Or better still, in every room of your house. Founded by interiors journalist Nicola Wilkes – who has written for the likes of Ideal Home and Elle Decoration – it’s an aspirational collection of accessories for the home. Clocks, candles, mirrors, throws – they all make an appearance in the House Envy store, including stock from high-end brands such as Tutti & Co, Karlsson and Madam Stolz.

A critical path to growth.

As a new brand, we were tasked with providing online marketing support to House Envy, in line with their chic target market. They already had a website, so their main aim was to raise their profile online via search engine optimisation (or SEO) and social media, and by growing their database and customer list. The goal? To put House Envy up there with the big homeware players.

How we approached the challenge

Our first task was to create an online marketing strategy to achieve the House Envy business goals – we began with SEO. The homeware market is hugely competitive, so we needed a focused, clever plan to start ranking for high traffic keywords. So we embarked on an SEO campaign that included onpage and offpage optimisation, as well as link building.

We also implemented the House Envy social media presence and began creating an email marketing strategy to grow their database.

Every good project is founded on research. During the conversion consultancy process – where we spot patterns in user behaviour and identify the shortfalls – we noted a problem with the existing site on mobile devices. Looking at the user journeys on Google Analytics, we saw that smartphone and tablet users were exiting the site at a similar point. That meant there was a problem with the mobile browsing experience, so we discussed our findings with the House Envy team.

While their website worked well on desktops, they needed a mobile-friendly version to maximise ROI – so our project grew to include a new mobile site, using responsive design to ensure the browsing experience was seamless from any device.

How did it turn out?

Now into its second year, the House Envy site has seen a steady increase in sales and ROI, even with a slimline budget. One of the biggest impacts has been seen on mobile devices. The responsive design has had a big role to play in increasing conversions and interactions from smartphones and tablets.

The site now appears high in the Google search results for competitive search terms such as ‘home accessories’. It also ranks on the first page for well-known brands, including Bloomingville and Broste Copenhagen. That means House Envy is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of John Lewis, The Range and Debenhams in the SEO stakes.

Going forward, we’ll be working with House Envy to continue the promising growth of their European market. As their digital partner, we’re always on the lookout for improvements and clever tweaks to bring yet more ROI.