Home Depot and Lowes See Q1 Decline in Traffic and Conversions

Website visits that converted to a sale fell 22.8% for Home Depot and 17% for Lowes

Home and furniture retailers are among those seeing falling traffic and decreased online sales, according to Similarweb estimates. Home Depot has seen one of the biggest drops in visits resulting in a sale, but compared with other home and retail brands does a better job of making the digital cash register ring.

The two largest retailers covered in this report, Home Depot and Lowes, count their first quarter as February to April, and the metrics we present here are organized according to that schedule. We follow traffic and conversion metrics as leading indicators likely to be reflected in the earnings reports of Home Depot (NYSE: HD) on May 16 and Lowes  (NYSE: LOW) on May 23.

Key takeaways

• Total US traffic, an indicator of topline interest in these companies’ e-commerce offerings, was down 5.3% for Home Depot, 8.9% for Lowes, and 13.1% for Overstock, according to Similarweb estimates.
• Turning traffic into sales was also harder for most players in the home and furniture sector, according to Similarweb estimates of the fraction of desktop web visits that result in a transaction. The number of those conversions was down 22.8% for Home Depot, 17% for Lowes, and 33.6% for Overstock. This hesitation to spend could be interpreted as an indicator of a potential recession or a lack of consumer confidence.
• While Home Depot attracted fewer visits and fewer conversion visits, it still had the best conversion rate among these competitors at 3.3%. However, that is down half a point from 3.8% a year ago and 3.8% in the quarter ended January 31.
• Wayfair improved its share of traffic within this competitive set by 1.9 points, from 20.9% to 22.4%.

Topline traffic is down for most players, with one notable exception

Ace Hardware, a relatively small player, had the greatest percentage gain in traffic, at 24.2%. Traffic to Wayfair was also up by 3.1%.

Wayfair gained the most share, while Lowes lost the most

The magnitude of Wayfair’s gain looks better as an increase in its share of traffic within this competitive set, up 1.5 points to 22.4%. Home Depot lost 0.6 points but still commands a 38.5% share.

Home Depot is the clear traffic leader

Home Depot drew more than 521 million visits to its website in the first quarter, compared with 321 million for Lowes, and 303 million for Wayfair.

Converted visits dropped for everyone except Ikea

Winning traffic is like getting people in the door of the store, but converted visits are the equivalent of making the cash register ring. Converted visits dropped for all players, although Ikea, Wayfair, and Ace Hardware kept that loss to under 10%, while Home Depot conversions dropped by 22.8%.

Home Depot, Ikea, and Wayfair had the strongest conversion rates

Home Depot still has the best conversion rate of any of these players, meaning that visitors to its website are more likely to make a purchase. Home Depot had a 3.3% conversion rate for the quarter, compared to 2.4% for Lowes.

Despite some of its other gains, Ace Hardware still has a relatively low conversion rate of 1.8% compared with 3.3% for Home Depot. Because of the way it’s structured as a cooperative of local retailers, Ace Hardware may be more oriented to getting people into the brick-and-mortar store as opposed to transacting business online.

Read More: eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization: 15 Tips to Grow Sales

Home Depot had more than double the converted visits of the next largest competitors

Home Depot had more than 7 million converted visits in the first quarter, compared to about 3 million each for Lowes.com and Wayfair. This estimate is based on desktop web traffic and does not include mobile web or app transactions.

Consumers may be more hesitant to spend on improving, repairing, and furnishing their homes, resulting in a downturn in online sales and conversion rates for these companies.

Public companies mentioned in this report include Home Depot (NYSE: HD) on May 16 and Lowes  (NYSE: LOW), Wayfair (NYSE: W), and Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK). Ikea is privately held, and Ace Hardware is a retail cooperative. Wayfair (NYSE: W) reported earnings earlier this month, and Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK) reported in late April, with both reporting losses on decreased revenue.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Contact: For more information, please write to press@similarweb.com.

Report By: David F. Carr, Senior Insights Manager

Methodology

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Image by Andy Giraud from Pixabay

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".