Should My Business Be On Houzz?
Pinterest and Houzz Intro
In 2009, a little website called Pinterest popped up. Pinterest is a social media site that allows people to “collect and organize” things (pictures) they love. The buzz words for Pinterest are “pin,” “repin” and “boards.” This site has grown popular for the female audience, nearly 80-90% of its users (as of late 2012). My wife uses Pinterest almost daily to get ideas for decorating, organizing, gluten-free recipes and more. It was not long after I started testing out Pinterest when I heard of another social site called Houzz.com.
What Is Houzz?
When I first stumbled upon Houzz, my first thought was, “Houzz.com is the Pinterest for the design and remodeling industry.” Instead of “pinning” a picture to your board, like you do in Pinterest, a user will add the photo to an “Ideabook.” So one might create Ideabooks that are called “Cabinet Ideas” or “Nursery Room” etc. A person will find a color that he or she likes and slide it into the proper Ideabook. The credit for that photo always goes back to the company that uploaded it.
A year ago, most remodelers, painters, designers and architects did not know what Houzz.com was! Today, almost all of them do and so do a growing number of homeowners. Houzz is an internal search engine for the design and home building market. A homeowners can type in keywords such as “cabinets,” “green walls for bedroom,” “murals for kid’s room,” “hardware ideas for modern kitchen” etc. Then pictures that have been properly labeled with keywords and descriptions begin to show up in the search results. It is a very cool idea!
The other thing Houzz does is allow homeowners and other professionals to look to hire a pro. Houzz has created a business directory for a growing number of metropolitan cities. Houzz business profiles also allow your customers to post a review about your company.
Example of a photo of a painter who uploaded this photo of a project recently…and it has been added to over 1,000 ideabooks already.
So Should My Business Be On Houzz?
Yes and No! It takes a lot of effort to get involved with Houzz. If you are an interior designer, a design build firm or an architect, I think Houzz is crucial for your business. If you are a painting contractor, Houzz is also a good idea but will require a bit of a time commitment. One has to take good quality photos, have a plan for uploading those photos on a regular basis (not just once), has to enter keywords for the best photos and get involved in using all the other features Houzz has to offer.
Houzz has begun to roll out special advertising opportunities as well in certain cities. I’d recommend building up your portfolio with a good amount of photos and then start looking at the cost of ads. You can also spend time answering questions people have about their home. This is a good way to engage with people and help brand your company.
This is a very brief blog article on Houzz. There is lots more to know! Curious though, who is using Houzz now? Any results from your efforts?
I’m on Houzz. I really only got my profile optimized this winter so while I haven’t seen significant leads and/or traffic, I’m not going to make a judgement yet (landscape design being seasonal and all). It’s been a useful tool for helping design clients zero in on what they want. As an example, there are so many styles of outdoor fireplace that it’s hard to nail it the first time out. I asked my client to pick 5-10 photos they like on Houzz, make an ideabook, and tell me what they did and didn’t like in each. It really helped me design their fireplace.
I don’t know if I’ll do the paid ads. For what I do, it’s hard to imagine the ROI would make sense.
@Dave
Hey Dave…it has been awhile! Thanks for the feedback. I would advise against doing the paid advertising right now as well. The best thing you can do is just keep updating your profile with quality photos, answering people’s questions, sharing other photos, …you know… using it as a social media site. If you out perform your competition, you’ll be listed high on the search results without paying.
But… Houzz will want to make some money, so at some point, organic search in Houzz will probably be slightly lower than the sponsored pictures. It is not a bad price right now to get more exposure for certain industries. I had a contractor in the DC area sign up a couple months ago… it was about $350 for two markets…it has doubled if not more in 2 months…so if he signed up today, $700+ a month
Hi David -
Saw your article and thought it might be good to consult you. We are a high end furniture company who have been on Houzz for about 3 months and have received 4 sales just of of our profile.
About 3 weeks ago we received a call from Houzz to begin advertising, they made it seem like we were getting a good deal as they would be advertising our products in 4 different markets for $600 a month which to us is a lot of money. We havent started yet because we need to have a professional photoshoot done to display all of our items in actual house settings because currently all of our photos are just of the products themselves. Well we 3 weeks after we talked to the advertising team we just got another call today from Houzz this time they are rolling out a “secret beta” test where retailers can begin selling items directly off of their website and Houzz will collect 15% of each sale. I was told when you go search the “all products” if we pay for this feature our products will come up higher in the search results so basically if we do not go with this feature our products will not come up higher in the search results which seems a little fishy to us.
So 2 calls in a month both wanting us to pay. Is it worth a high end furniture company paying to advertise in 4 markets for $600 a month? Is it worth participating in their “secret beta” test and begin selling our products off of their website for 15% of each sale?