Build.com Launches New Site Focused on Projects Rather than Products

Like many smart e-commerce companies these days, Build.com has realized that it needs to start operating more like a content company. That’s why it recently redesigned its website to offer more inspiration to its customers through full-room or project ideas that point customers to specific products and how they fit into a larger space, which is, in turn, full of lots of products that the customer can buy.

“We’re moving from inspiration to installation – trademark pending,” joked Brandon Proctor, VP of Marketing at the firm, when he spoke to me at eTail East this year. The company is leveraging in-home shots that link directly to products, which allows for people to go to a product and see it installed in a home, and then buy the other products that match it.

In order to take this idea full circle, Build.com has begun launching installation videos of all its products, served up to customers after they buy. Those videos are shot in-house and the installations are done by internal employees, often for the first time so as to recreate the “first-time installation” experience.

With a product sku count over 800,000, one might wonder how the company is doing it all.

Watch this brief video below and hear from Brandon exactly what drove him and the company to make this shift, and how they’re managing it all.