What began in 1995 as a list of home services contractors has transformed into a direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketplace connecting homeowners to handymen — but Angi is still working to simplify the customer experience as consumers continue the nesting trend began during the pandemic.
New, browsable shopping features, launched earlier this month, allow people to pre-plan home projects, ranging from smaller jobs such as replacing a faucet to larger ones such as painting a room. The goal is to provide transparency and help consumers get a sense of what they might need to do to keep up their home, with actual pricing available while browsing based on 20-plus years of service requests.
“We know at a reasonably granular level for someone that has a home of your size, in your ZIP code, at this time of year, these are the kind of tasks you should be doing, these are the kinds of things that need to get done inside your home,” Oisin Hanrahan, CEO of Angi, told PYMNTS. “And as a result, we’re coming up with more and more ways to really merchandise that.”
The new shopping features are an evolution of Angi Services, the platform’s suite of pre-priced projects launched last year to remove the uncertainty of waiting for multiple professional matches and quotes.
“Rather than just always connect you with a pro and allow you to take that experience offline, more and more we’ve been offering you the ability to really transact online,” Hanrahan said. “And that starts with us outlining what the task is, what’s the services you’re going to buy, what’s included, what’s not.”
More and more, he said, consumers are coming to Angi for one project and walking away with several others based on the company’s recommendations.
Hanrahan added, though, that he doesn’t mind if consumers take their conversations and business with contractors off Angi’s platform. The average person is going to need a dozen things done in their home each year if they’re taking good care of it, he said, which leaves plenty of opportunity for future interactions with Angi.
Trends In Projects
Hanrahan said Angi saw a spike in home improvement projects during the pandemic as people used their homes more and in different ways than they previously had. Consumers also had more money to spend as travel and other leisure expenses plummeted.
Now, with the pandemic subsiding and some stimulus money still tucked away, Angi is seeing homeowners looking to update cosmetic features of their houses to make them look good when hosting people for the first time in months. Typical projects include painting, flooring, kitchen renovations and bathroom remodels.
Hanrahan said consumers are also thinking differently about their first homebuying experience and turning to Angi for help. Where it used to be that most first-time homebuyers bought a small starter home with plans to upgrade down the road, tightening inventory has caused more and more people to buy larger homes that need work right out of the gate.
“So that’s definitely changed the calculus for people on when to invest in home renovation, and I think people are doing more challenging work early on in their homebuying journey,” Hanrahan said. “And I think that’s a good thing. It’s exciting.”
The Membership Model
Hanrahan took over as CEO of Angi in February, just over two years after his home services startup, Handy, was acquired by the company. In March, Hanrahan told Forbes that he wants to bring “high-velocity change” to the company — a vow he appears to have kept in his first six months on the job.
Angi’s new shoppable features fit with its new “Angi Key” membership program, which recently moved from beta-testing to a permanent feature. The program provides enrolled customers with a 20 percent discount on hundreds of home services for an annual fee of $29.99.
Hanrahan said Angi is still “very early in the membership journey,” but the company already has about 100,000 members signed up so far. The company has found that members are more engaged in using Angi to find home services and they download the Angi app more frequently.
According to PYMNTS research, 40 percent of consumers sign up for a new subscription plan because it can save them money and 41 percent sign up because it can save them time.
“It’s an opportunity for us to really invest in each individual customer that comes and joins the platform, because we know that they’ve made an investment in us,” Hanrahan said.
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