The online retailer remained unconvinced of mobile?s relevance for the brand?s customers for a long time given that buying furniture is a considered purchase. However, as smartphone adoption continued to grow, mobile?s potential as a lead generation tool became evident. 

?Mobile was a difficult thing wrapping our head around,? said Matthew Hardgrove, director of marketing at HomeClick. ?We saw a lot of companies doing it but it wasn?t something we thought that we were missing too much of a piece of.

?We?ve realized that it is about more of a lead generation approach, where the conversion with a very considered purchase, you are never going to get that on mobile,? he said. ?But you are going to give consumers a much better experience than before.? 

In the competitive furniture and home décor, HomeClick is positioned as offering a variety of products at competitive prices. 

The online retailer launched a mobile site approximately a year ago and has seen it quickly take off, with traffic and revenue on mobile growing. Desktop conversions have grown since the mobile site was introduced as well. 

Additionally, HomeClick more than doubled its spend in traffic through mobile between 2015 and 2016. 

At first, HomeClick was focused heavily on mobile conversions and tracking last-click attribution for purchases. The results were underwhelming. 

Then, the retailer starting working with Google to get a cross-device report. 

Now, HomeClick is able to directly connect a mobile user to a desktop user to get an overall view of how many mobile users are coming back on desktop. 

As a result, HomeClick has been able to better understand the value in mobile traffic that it was missing previously, realizing that sometimes shoppers are coming back on desktop search or from an email after searching on mobile. 

HomeClick often analyzes traffic by a specific brand that it carries. With cross-device attribution from Google, the retailer is better able to narrow in on the cost per acquisition per brand. 

The retailer is focused on enhancing its tracking and attribution to gain a holistic view of customers, including passing user IDs through Google analytics and using email signups for better internal reporting. 

Now, when HomeClick can track a user it is passing the information through Google Analytics so it can drive the volume of cross-device insight in its own data. 

Ultimately, HomeClick hopes to get a much clearer sense of what the customer lifecycle looks like by combining the cross-device tracking with what it sees happening through AdWords. The goal is to be able to look at affiliate target, email and the various other campaigns the company is involved with to figure out how it all fits together and make adjustments. 

HomeClick is boosting its marketing in other ways, such as building a content channel that includes how-tos and décor ideas. 

Earlier this year, HomeClick made all its emails mobile responsive. As a result, mobile traffic in email has grown and now accounts for approximately half. 

?If you are just looking at the mobile cost in revenue, you are going to shut down all of the campaigns because it doesn?t look healthy,? Mr. Hardgrove said. 

?When we increase our mobile traffic, we see our desktop traffic become more efficient and better,? he said.