SITUATION

THD sought to improve the effectiveness of content at scale.

As the world’s largest home improvement retailer, The Home Depot adapted quickly to the new challenges and opportunities of the pandemic. With locked-down consumers tackling more projects around the home, The Home Depot recognized the increasing importance of content well beyond product descriptions. Consumers sought inspiration and ideas, guidance on selecting the right products, project instruction, and more. With a wealth of DIY Projects + Ideas content already, The Home Depot sought to answer the question: How can we make this content more visible and effective at scale?

SOLUTION

Developing a three-pronged approach to assess the value of DIY content, identify characteristics of the top performing content, and establish “best-in-class” standards.

To identify what distinguished the highest-performing content, we collaborated with The Home Depot team to assemble a unique set of data and tags. We then conducted deep analysis to identify correlations between content characteristics and performance.

Our CS Brain team also reviewed high performing and low performing content to further understand differences in content quality and execution and their impact on customer behavior. And we conducted a large evaluation of the content’s effectiveness with more than 1,000 customers using Content Science’s ContentWRX tool.

With these new insights assembled, we codified recommended changes to content templates, standards, and processes in a comprehensive set of documentation.

RESULTS

The Home Depot proved the impact and value of optimizing DIY content for search visibility.

Optimized DIY content resulted in +753% higher average revenue and +500% higher average visits than unoptimized DIY content.

Additionally, this effort enabled the home improvement retailer to standardize DIY content optimization at scale, make informed decisions about removing underperforming DIY articles, and efficiently repeat the process of measuring the impact and value of DIY content.