When you’re shopping for furniture online, you can measure the product and the space in your home it would occupy, but it’s difficult to tell how exactly it’ll look. Which rug would look better in the living room — the colorful striped one or the plain blue? Should it be placed under the coffee table or the couch?
Online furniture retailer CB2 — the sister company of Crate & Barrel — recognized this need and designed their UX to create a seamless online shopping experience. On their site, you can see how each of their products, with accurate measurements, would look in your own home:
1) Select a product and click “view in my room.”
2) Choose one of the standard CB2 rooms or upload a photo of your own room.
3) The following photo is of the selected rug in CB2’s dining room layout.
4) By clicking on the product, you can move it around the room. If you click on the small black arrows, you can change the angle at which it’s positioned.
5) You can select another product from the sidebar and directly replace the one in the photo — if you change the size, it will also automatically adjust.
6) Finally, you can download and share the image before deciding to purchase.
CB2’s “view in room” feature and the chance to upload your own room to the site, makes the furniture shopping process so much easier — it increases your likelihood of satisfaction when the product arrives and decreases the hassle of returns and exchanges. This is an example of smart UX that directly strengthens company-customer relationships.