How to Solve Your Product Discovery Dilemma With Onton

Picture this: you’ve just moved into a new house or apartment and have a blank canvas waiting to be filled with new furniture and decor. So you eagerly start shopping online, only to be bombarded with sponsored ads, irrelevant results, and endless products that all look the same.

Welcome to the average shopper’s product discovery journey.

While product discovery is a well-known issue in ecommerce and interior design, there has been a noticeable lack of solutions that address the problem at its core—until today. Let’s take a deeper look into why product discovery is such a nuisance for homeowners and how AI-powered search tools can simplify your shopping experience.

What is product discovery?

While the term “product discovery” sounds innocent (or even exciting) to amateur designers and first-time homeowners, it’s one of the most frustrating stages of your interior design journey. In essence, product discovery is the process of finding new pieces and decor when you don’t have an exact product in mind. 

While product discovery isn’t a factor for everyday purchases and low-cost items (like a set of hangers or a latte at your favorite café), it’s a major problem when shopping for furniture and decor. Here’s why:

Interior design can be very expensive 

Even if you’re purchasing most of your pieces from Ikea or Living Spaces, furnishing even a single room can cost thousands. For a purchase that substantial, you’ll want to do some research. 

There are endless options to choose from

If you search “antique brass lamp” on Google or Bing, these search engines will bombard you with thousands of results to sift through. As a result, you can easily spend hours (or days) trying to find the best piece for your home.

The pieces you choose will be yours for years 

Most homeowners don’t replace their furniture for 10-12 years. The thought of being stuck with buyer’s remorse for over a decade is enough to scare anyone into a lengthy product discovery journey.

Most shoppers who struggle with product discovery find themselves asking, “Why aren’t brands attempting to solve this issue?” The truth is that their business model caters to serving as many people as possible. That’s why Pottery Barn currently has over 300 sofas on its website. They cover as many tastes and styles as possible while leaving it up to you to sift through every option and find which piece suits you best. 

What makes product discovery so difficult for online shoppers?

Product discovery is part maze and part rabbit hole. You start with an idea of what you want. But just a few searches in, you’re already drowning in options that likely deviate from your original vision. Here are several prevalent factors that make product discovery such a burden.

Getting the search results you want isn’t easy

While most shoppers have a vision of what they’re looking for, pinpointing the exact item that suits their needs can be challenging, especially with text-based searches. You’ll be swimming in a sea of sofas if you don’t enter the perfect keyword combinations or filtering options (like price, color, or style), transforming your interior design journey from fun to frustrating. Even when you nail your keyword combinations, you’ll still have dozens of products to sift through, including descriptions and reviews. 

Analysis paralysis

Having to experiment with keyword combinations, sift through endless product pages, and consult multiple reviews for every item on your radar can be overwhelming, to say the least. The complicated nature of product discovery can quickly lead to analysis paralysis, where deciding which pieces and decor to buy seems like a futile task. 

Paid ads and repetitive results

As if search criteria and analysis paralysis weren’t enough to deal with, shoppers also have to wade through numerous ads and sponsored content. Because search engines prioritize paid content, you’ll spend quite a bit of time digging before “organic” results begin to appear. Plus, big tech algorithms tend to display the same items repeatedly until you make a purchase, further extending your product discovery journey. 

How shoppers typically deal with product discovery

When product discovery makes shopping a chore (or an anxiety attack), you want to get done with it ASAP. So you settle for ’good enough’ and purchase from a popular brand whose offerings loosely align with your tastes and preferences. While settling on your furniture and decor ends the product discovery journey, there are several good reasons why you shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet.

Buyer’s remorse and complicated returns 

When shoppers take a half-measure (like settling for a popular brand) to get their product discovery journey over with, the likelihood of them experiencing buyer’s remorse goes up dramatically. They might find the pieces they bought don’t quite fit within their design space or that the product description was misleading, all because they opted to rush the purchase at the 11th hour. 

While many online furniture and decor stores offer returns, sending pieces back can be a bigger hassle than simply keeping them. For example, Pottery Barn offers a 30-day return policy, but the shopper must handle shipping, and the product must be fully disassembled and returned to the original packaging. The complicated nature of online returns often causes shoppers to hold onto pieces they don’t want for years. 

Your home starts looking bland and uninspired

Naturally, settling on products from popular brands will make your home look very similar to a catalog. You’ll quickly find that your space is filled with mass-produced pieces that lack character rather than unique pieces that fit your personal style. While thrifting and dupe-hunting can help reintroduce some unique character into your home, these new pieces may clash with the mass-produced options you've already introduced.

How Onton makes product discovery simple, easy, and effective

From initial inspiration to narrowing down your choices and finally settling on the ideal piece, Onton is your one-stop shop for finding new furniture and decor online.

Onton Search

Say goodbye to ads, sponsored content, SEO buzzwords, and irrelevant results. Onton Search offers ad-free and trend-agnostic searches using both images and text. Simply put, we make it easy for you to find the pieces that suit your space and style—every time. 

Onton Imagine

One of the most frustrating aspects of product discovery is trying to visualize how each piece will look in your home. With Onton Imagine, you can generate photorealistic renditions of your design space, complete with furniture, decor, and even color palettes! This removes the guesswork surrounding product discovery and reduces the likelihood of returns.

Onton Discover

It’s common for shoppers to find themselves staring at a blank search bar, wondering how to start their product discovery journey. Onton Discover helps ignite your creative spark with hundreds of user-generated (and shoppable) roomscapes to browse through. If you see a piece you can’t live without, all it takes is one click, and it’s in your cart.

Onton Concierge

Looking for expert-level design advice without hiring a personal designer? Onton Concierge is an AI-powered personal design assistant that can steer you toward the products that fit your unique style. Simply enter your questions and let the AI analyze your preferences to simplify your interior design journey.

With Onton, you can transform product discovery from a stressful and time-consuming endeavor into a fun and engaging experience and stepping stone to designing the home of your dreams. 

Try Onton for free and simplify your product discovery journey today!