Homebook uses Shopping ads to drive high-quality leads to merchants

Homebook.pl is a leading Polish Comparison Shopping Service for home and garden decor. The site’s inspirational photos, tips, trends, products and specialist knowledge attracted almost 26M¹ unique visitors in 2017.

Homebook offers merchants a traffic acquisition solution that connects retailers with a large network of home and garden enthusiasts. And consumer intent is clear-cut — people come to the site to find inspiration for their home and garden makeovers, and consequently make purchases from merchants.

After a highly successful launch in 2015, the site experienced a lull in performance during early 2018, where Search traffic grew slower than anticipated. Homebook set out to develop a strategy that would send more high-value leads at scale to their merchants.

When Shopping Ads were launched for Comparison Shopping Services Homebook and its performance marketing agency, SmartYou, believed they could use the platform to drive incremental volume and quality clicks to their merchants’ home and garden products.

— Maciej Ziemczonek, Performance & Outbound Marketing Manager, Homebook

Shopping ads via CSSs allow consumers to quickly and easily find merchants’ online inventory. They show users a photo of the product, a title, price, store name, and more. “We knew this represented an opportunity for Homebook that we simply could not miss out on,” said Maciej Ziemczonek, Performance & Outbound Marketing Manager, Homebook.

SmartYou’s in-house bid management script was linked to enhanced CPC that allowed Homebook to use conversion values and adjust bids on a daily basis for each individual merchant. The algorithm maximised traffic volume without surpassing the set CPC.  

According to SmartYou’s operational director, Piotr Stryjniak, the dynamic nature of Shopping ads was one of its strongest assets. “It was thanks to this solution that we were able to discover quickly the scale of traffic generated by Shopping campaigns”.

With the help of Shopping ads, Homebook saw a 173%* uplift in transactions and a 122% increase in revenue between March and May 2018. Performance hit record levels in April 2018 when Shopping campaigns generated a further 235% in transactions and a 156% increase in revenue.

The campaign also had a direct impact on merchants’ sales. One of the leading merchants for sanitary fitting reported an impressive 163% increase in revenue in the first two months compared to the previous period. The majority of the merchants had never used Shopping ads so enlisting in the Comparison Shopping Services extended their reach and product exposure.   

The significant boost in traffic, additional merchants and more products meant that a standard feed fetch was unable to cope. Homebook quickly implemented the Content API for Shopping which resolved the issue and allowed the site to automatically add more merchants.

The Domodi Group, Homebook’s parent company, was so pleased with the results that they decided to participate in Shopping ads with two more of their Polish CSS domains  — Domodi and Allani — as well as partner websites in Italy and Spain.

— Maciej Ziemczonek, Performance & Outbound Marketing Manager, Homebook