From mattresses to full living room sets and everything in between, furniture ecommerce is booming — with no indication of slowing down.
Driven by increased demand for online shopping, there are more opportunities for furniture businesses to connect with their customers, drive purchases, and improve the overall customer experience online.
Now more than ever, certain website trends are key for furniture ecommerce websites to implement. These include personalization, continuous improvements, and content management.
Below, we’ll discuss why ecommerce websites are necessary for your furniture business, what the top websites have in common, and how you can achieve that great reputation for your own business:
Ecommerce, in general, is growing, with online household furniture sales leading that growth. In 2022 alone, the online household furniture market is worth $57.8 billion— and is expected to grow 4.1% in 2022.
With an increased demand for online furniture shopping, it’s important for your business to take advantage of this opportunity by connecting with potential customers (online and in-store) and providing them with the ecommerce experience they want.
There are tons of brands in the marketplace right now who are trying to connect with their customers, but only a small percentage of them are effectively making it happen. What do the leaders do differently than the other brands?
The top furniture ecommerce websites of 2022 all have three things in common:
Your customers are searching for an experience that’s tailored to their wants and needs. In fact, most customers expect a personalized experience now.
By tailoring your website to your audience, you’re taking the time to connect with them and provide the experience that they’re looking for.
While a personalized experience looks different for every brand, there are some key features an ecommerce furniture business can use:
By using data to provide relevant product recommendations and cross-sell items, your customers will be able to find what they’re looking for faster. They may even find something they didn’t have in mind before you recommended it to them.
It’s reported that “74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized,” so providing recommendations based on their shopping history can be very beneficial.
By providing an experience that’s tailored to each shopper, you can improve the shopping experience, help your customers find what they need, and increase the size of orders.
Customer segmentation is a critical part of marketing and ecommerce, as it allows you to personalize the shopping experience through segments. You can tag (and re-tag) shoppers throughout their purchase journey to maintain an up-to-date profile of your customers and better understand their experience.
While segmentation might occur early in the buyer’s journey, the benefits are seen throughout the entire experience.
According to McKinsey and Company, “In general, a positive customer experience is hugely meaningful to a retailer’s success: it yields 20 percent higher customer-satisfaction rates, a 10 to 15 percent boost in sales-conversion rates, and an increase in employee engagement of 20 to 30 percent.”
Through reporting and analytics, you can know who is shopping today (and what they’re looking for), who hasn’t shopped recently, and more. These details help you make decisions about your marketing plans, allow you to further target your audience, and create more data-driven business decisions.
For example, research shows organizations with data-driven strategies are more likely to meet and exceed their revenue targets while gaining an advantage over their competitors.
The right ecommerce platform will help your business personalize the customer experience through built-in tools such as customer segmentation and analytics.
The digital furniture marketplace is rapidly changing. To keep up with these changes, it’s important to continuously improve your business to meet the needs of your customers, demands of the market, and more.
While continuous improvements might look different for every brand, here are some ways your ecommerce furniture business can stay ahead of the competition:
Top furniture ecommerce websites aren't only personalized for the customer — they’re prioritized to the retailer.
Top software should have a roadmap of initiatives, that offers you the benefits of a steady stream of changes and enhancements.
It’s crucial that the platform you choose for your business strives to produce the highest value software in the shortest time to market, regularly releasing software updates, both large and small.
Technology and consumer demands are rapidly changing, which makes continuous improvement ideal for your business. Without improvements, it would be impossible to stay relevant.
In addition to personalization and continuous improvement, effectively managing your business’s content will help you to further align your strategy to the strategies of the top ecommerce websites.
By ensuring that your website is always up to date, your customers will be able to have a seamless experience. Here are a couple of ways you can make sure that happens:
With an integration layer that plugs into your ERP system, you can enable a unified operation between your digital and brick-and-mortar stores. With real-time updates, your customers can have a seamless omnichannel furniture shopping experience.
This can help you throughout the entire process, including delivery and updates. You can tie these tracking systems together to provide clear delivery communication with email updates that include online order tracking.
Utilize a product information management (PIM) system that was made to handle furniture to ensure your products are well described and optimally displayed, allowing your customers to see exactly how their furniture would look, how variations would change the pieces, and allows them to see the possible customization options.
By giving your customers the chance to see their products before they make a purchase, you’re giving them an accurate experience, setting yourself up for fewer returns and complaints, and providing a better overall customer experience.
Keep your custom pages and homepage fresh and relative by creating new content for events, holidays, seasonality and more. With the right ecommerce platform, you create set your content to change automatically in the future, as well as preview what custom content and promotions will look like to your customers.
While the top furniture ecommerce website trends change all the time, it doesn’t have to be difficult to keep up with them. With the right furniture ecommerce platform, you can do everything you need to do to stay ahead of the competition.
By working with the right furniture ecommerce software, you can focus on new ways to differentiate your brand and drive revenue, rather than figuring out how to replicate furniture features and tactics that have already been built.
You may still have questions about finding the right software for your furniture business, including:
Explore A Buyer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Ecommerce Software today to find the answers to these questions (and more) and learn how to identify the right furniture ecommerce software for your business.