Selecting the best furniture retail website platform can be challenging with so many ecommerce platforms currently available. Blueport is a top-rated online shopping platform built for furniture retailers needing compelling omnichannel shopping experiences and streamlined operations. Below, we look at the top features of the best furniture retail website platform available, and how to choose an online shopping platform that suits your furniture business.
Key Considerations When Choosing the Best Retail Website Platform
Implementation
The implementation process refers to all the steps necessary to launch, maintain, and update your furniture retail website. Because this process is technical, many retailers, particularly in unique industries like furniture, find ecommerce implementations challenging or intimidating. Blueport's retail website platform offers great implementation tools, implementation teams with expertise in furniture, and access to tutorials and how-to guides to keep the process running smoothly.
Native Furniture Features
Civic Science reported that “37% of people have made a furniture purchase based exclusively on an online-only shopping experience and transaction,” in 2021 — compared to 34% in 2020.
With the increase of online furniture buyers, it's important for furniture ecommerce businesses to pay attention to native furniture features when selecting a retail website platform. Today’s consumers want features like the ability to customize the color, size, and materials of a product.
Blueport offers rich customization tools, high-quality design, and an ERP integration allowing critical big ticket features such as real-time pricing, availability, and shipping information.
Unified Commerce
Consumers expect seamless retail experiences when shopping online, especially with high-value purchases. Unified commerce is an end-to-end retail website solution that combines ecommerce, Point of Sale (POS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), inventory management, order fulfillment, shipping, and more- with the potential for headless ecommerce in the future.
The best website platform to build a retail store will offer a multitude of unified commerce options. Blueport's unified commerce platform offers a consistent shopping experience to customers between different touchpoints while simultaneously giving retailers a centralized management solution. It helps connect your online store with your brick-and-mortar establishment, social media, internal workflows, and other channels into a seamless shopping experience.
Local Store Optimization
The online store platform you choose should allow you to optimize your website for local SEO and in-store shopping. The best retail ecommerce platforms integrate with your internal systems and provide accurate pricing so that what a customer sees online matches with their local in-store experience. Blueport allows brick-and-mortar businesses to establish an online retail experience for customers using sophisticated geolocation and content optimization tools. This ensures your customers see the same items, pricing, promotions, delivery dates, financing options, and warranty options online that they would see in your store.
Sales Tools
Consumers want to feel like the stores they shop at online are just as real and tangible as the in-store experience. They want to have the ability to go back and forth between shopping online and in-store smoothly. Ideally, your online shopping platform will even allow customers to start a purchase online and complete it in-store or vice versa. This need for an omnichannel shopping experience is a furniture retail trend that cannot be ignored.
Blueport enables customers to see which products are in stock, place an order online for in-store pickup or delivery, the ability to convert store quotes online, and so much more.
Hosting
Large retail websites in visual industries like Furniture with large image and video files for multiple products can have difficulty finding a platform with enough bandwidth to sustain their online operations. The best retail website platform will offer robust cloud hosting capabilities. If possible, select a retail website platform like Blueport that provides hosting with 100% hardware and network redundancy for maximum uptime.
Security
Ecommerce platforms have a multitude of moving parts. There are cipher standards and firewall rules to worry about following, proactive scanning for penetration and intrusion you need to do consistently, and regular security updates to ensure you have the latest and most comprehensive protection. Look for a platform like Blueport that offers top-of-the-line security integrations and support staff that address security concerns should they arise.
Third-Party Features
Consumers expect retailers to be affiliated with and have integrated access to popular third-party applications and features. They should be able to make purchases with commonly used web wallets like PayPal and chat live with your sales team or support staff directly on your website.
Third-party apps like Google Analytics and UserTesting make gathering data about user behavior on your site and optimizing your site accordingly easy, so look for retail website platforms that offer these integrations. Blueport has a massive repository of third-party integrations including:
- Google Analytics
- Live Chat
- Zendesk
- Bluecore
- Dotdigital
- And more
Additionally, these features are pre-tuned for furniture, and integrated with the Blueport platform.
Customer Support
The operation of your digital store has many facets and moving parts that can be difficult to manage, especially with large sales and marketing teams that need support. The best online store platforms for furniture businesses have great customer support options.
Get Started With The Best Retail Website Platform
One thing is certain: not all retail platforms are the same. A solution that allows shoppers to buy your furniture products on their own terms with an eye to scaling your business growth is key to increasing your revenue (and loyal customer base) year after year.
Looking for the best retail website platform designed for furniture retailers? Blueport offers integrated and customizable furniture retail website platform options for a best-in-class ecommerce website that differentiates you from your competitors. You’ll have access to more than 100+ ecommerce features to help improve the customer experience and keep your furniture business running seamlessly. Contact us now to learn more.
