DIY chain leads online home appliance retailers

The top-ranked home appliance e-commerce website has been identified.



According to the new J.D. Power 2015 Appliance Shopper Website Evaluation Study, Lowe's ranks highest among appliance retailer websites, with a score of 848 out of 1,000, up by nine points from 2014.



Following Lowe's in the rankings are Best Buy and The Home Depot in a tie (840). Appliance brand websites that are less complicated than shoppers expect are nearly three times more likely to drive showroom traffic than those that are more complicated than expected (62% compared to 22%, respectively).



Additionally, among appliance shoppers who visit a retailer website and the experience is less complicated than expected, 66% say they "definitely will" consider purchasing other products by the brand, while 51% say the same for brand websites.



According to the study, a growing percentage of appliance shoppers are using a mobile device for their research in 2015 (26% compared to 20% in 2013). However, satisfaction is higher across all study factors among shoppers who use desktop/laptop than among those who use mobile to gain access to brand and retailer websites.



The biggest gap is in the speed factor. There is a 21-point gap in satisfaction with speed between shoppers who use desktop as opposed to mobile to access a brand website (821 compared to 800, respectively) and a 20-point gap between those who use desktop as opposed to mobile to gain access to a retailer website (839 compared to 819).



Other findings include:



• Product reviews (69%) and pricing (64%) are the most important content on appliance brand and retailer websites.



• Retailer websites continue to be the most useful to shoppers researching a major appliance (77%), followed by brand (57%), search engines or portals (42%), third-party (30%) and other (1%) websites.



• Shoppers are more likely to use a mobile website than a mobile app when researching an appliance on either a brand or retailer website by performing such activities as finding price information (72% compared to 57%, respectively), reading appliance reviews (66% compared to 53%) and finding a retailer/store location (70% compared to 57%).