What is Houzz? Houzz Review

Houzz is an Internet home improvement platform that combines the functions of an online market and a social networking site. It improves the efficiency of interior home improvement by connecting owners, home improvement designers and construction parties. Users can communicate directly with designers and contact construction parties on the platform. In addition, users can also share their home improvement experiences and pictures of the decorated homes on the platform.

About Houzz

Houzz was founded by a couple, Adi and Alon. Houzz is a home decoration design community from Silicon Valley. It creates and promotes the most fashionable home decoration concepts by organically combining designers, photographers and owners. It is known as the "Wikipedia of Home Decoration".

Houzz is an American interior design encyclopedia, a communication community and photo library for interior and exterior design enthusiasts. More than 25,000 designers have uploaded more than 200,000 inspiring photos. In addition to a large number of photos, Houzz is also famous for thousands of high-quality articles and product recommendations written by designers. Houzz is also a company that specializes in providing decoration style suggestions for high-end communities in the United States. Users can choose different styles of decoration, such as Asian style, Mediterranean style, tropical decoration style, etc., and can also choose according to different indoor or outdoor spaces, such as kitchens, bathrooms, hallways, etc.

By the end of 2016, Houzz had entered localized platforms in the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Singapore and India, and overseas traffic has increased to 45%. For Chinese users, the greatest value of Houzz is to provide a variety of home furnishing matching examples for reference during decoration. According to functional areas, Houzz provides matching examples for kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms and other areas.

Main Products

In November 2010, Houzz launched its iPad app.

In 2012, the Android version of the application was launched.

In 2013, a new product "Pro+" was launched in 12 urban areas in the United States. This is a paid program for professionals, which allows them to have more visibility in the local area and highlight their work. In essence, Houzz charges advertising fees for this. After the pilot was successful, it was expanded to 425 new markets in the United States and Canada, and the Pro+ dashboard analysis tool (Pro+ Dashboard) was launched to obtain real-time data, click counts, click-through rates and add rates of uploaded photos to help professionals optimize their marketing and brand building.

In 2013, we launched the Real Cost Finder, an interactive tool to help owners make decisions and analyze real estate.

In 2014, we launched Site Designer to help professionals build and publish websites.

In 2014, we acquired Garden Web to add garden content.

In 2015, Houzz launched Sketch, a new feature that allows users to add any product to any photo and seek communication and collaboration with professionals.

In March 2016, Houzz opened its API to third parties and cooperated with Shopify to make it easier for merchants on the platform to sell and manage their inventory. In December, it cooperated with ShipStation to meet the logistics and transportation needs of merchants.

In 2017, the AR product View in My Room was launched. Houzz selected 300,000 of the most popular single products (SKUs), such as coffee tables, lamps, etc., and created 3D models for them.

Features

1. Use pictures as the entrance to build a platform that covers product markets, professionals, community forums and other services. Houzz covers media, user input content, recommended experts, discussion forums and e-commerce. Users can solve all home improvement needs in one app, allowing Houzz to occupy a larger market space.

2. Simple operation. Each function is just an additional option. Placing it in a prominent position is a "reminder" consumption. Houzz picture tags and links to similar products will increase users' "reminder" consumption.

3. Profit link: Houzz can help professionals obtain effective customers and provide them with professional products and services, so professionals will pay for its advertising fees; secondly, it is an e-commerce platform. Merchants who enter the platform must pay Houzz 15% of the transaction amount, which is also the fastest growing profit link of Houzz. But for business owners, the Houzz platform is completely free, which can better guide online traffic.

4. Image database: The entire image database actually becomes the entrance to all traffic and expands at the same time. First, users upload pictures, so that the platform absorbs various styles and types; second, pictures are used to attract new users, allowing users to change from active search to passive browsing, eliminating customer blind spots; finally, the platform conducts big data analysis based on user preferences to provide professionals with more targeted information for customer acquisition.

5. Taking products as the core and optimizing products based on user needs is the principle that Houzz adheres to. The primary task of every new business deployment of Houzz is to optimize products.

Financing

-After receiving its first round of funding in September 2010, Houzz hired top engineers from Google, PayPal (eBay) and Yahoo!, and in November, Houzz's iPad app was launched.

-In 2011, Houzz completed a $11.6 million Series B financing round led by Sequoia Capital.

-In January 2013, Houzz completed a $35 million Series C financing round led by NEA and GGV Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Comacast Ventures, KPCB and David Sacks.

- In 2014, Houzz completed a $165 million Series D financing round, led by Sequoia Capital and existing shareholder Oren Zeev, with participation from NEA, GGV Capital and KPCB's original investment institutions, as well as DST Global and T. Rowe Price. After the financing, Houzz's valuation has exceeded $2.3 billion.

honor

Houzz has been called the "Wikipedia of interior and exterior design" by CNN.

Houzz app is the home improvement app that won Google Play's 2016 Best App Award.