How can it hurt your business? Let us count the ways
By Anastasia Stefanova, AVB Marketing
As a furniture retailer, you’ve grown your business on the art of taking a customer through the sales journey.
You have them touch and feel the product, you meticulously rearrange the store, you train and incentivize your sales team, and more. Some may wonder if people really even buy furniture online at all. Adding pricing, payment gateways and other e-commerce solutions may seem like we are relinquishing control of the sales process to the consumer.
But the real question isn’t “Should people buy furniture online?” but rather “Do people buy furniture online?” And the answer to that is that despite the obvious pitfalls of online furniture shopping for both the retailer and the consumer, online furniture sales are in the hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide.
People Do Buy Furniture Online – a Lot of It.
Your online presence is the most likely the first touchpoint people will have with your brand. With information access at our fingertips, even the in-store shopper has already explored your catalog, competitors and online reviews before ever stepping foot in your store.
But what about those who don’t want to come into the store? How many potential sales are being given to the competitor simply by not providing that shopper the ability to purchase from the website when they want to?
Inflating online pricing, avoiding pricing entirely or not providing a way to purchase online often sends the wrong message to the online shopper. It suggests that:
- This retailer must be way out of my price range if they don’t show their pricing
- This retailer is inconvenient to shop from
- This retailer is not as “sophisticated” as other area competitors.
It can also result in these reactions by customers:
- I’ve entered everything I wish to buy but can’t buy it — I’m frustrated
- I’ll purchase in the store but I’m just trying to get an idea for what something costs right now — let me check if another retailer has pricing on their site
We are trying to fight the digital age by strong-arming the consumer into purchasing the way we want them to by giving them a limited way to interact with us. However, the main driver of the online shopper is convenience. This type of shopper does not want to come into the store, and removing their ability to shop online has cost you a sale, rather than driving it to the store.
Conversely, a customer who wants to touch and feel the product will be unlikely to purchase online, even if you provide a seamless way for them to do it. However, they often want to browse the inventory and pricing online before coming in to get an idea of what to expect from the retailer. If they don’t find what they want online, you may risk sending them right through the doors of your competitor instead.
With all age groups doing a massive amount of online shopping, your website is the “silent employee.” It works as another location that operates 24/7, even when the rest of the employees head home. It displays your product, your brand and sells on your behalf. It’s unlikely that the average brick-and-mortar location will drive 100 people every day for a year, but this is a low-end estimate of the traffic you’d get at your online “location.” With this many eyeballs and potential shoppers at stake, we must streamline their ability to interact with us and make it easier to purchase.
Benefits of being transactional
- Cost savings: Compared to your brick-and-mortar store, overhead for an online store that potentially “greets” over 100 customers a day, 24/7 is significantly lower.
- Track dollars: Track conversions on your website directly to the marketing you run to see how your dollars perform.
- Digital ad performance: Boost overall campaign performance by allowing your campaigns to see corresponding website results, which improves optimization.
- Scalability: Increase transaction volume and revenue over time through expanded customer reach and ability to purchase.
- Compete: Level the playing field with larger competitors that do offer online purchase options, even ifyou have higher price points.
- Convenience: Help shoppers get what they need and are looking for and drive more foot traffic.
- Reach: You get an added location that works on your behalf and can be found by customers online, without ever leaving their homes.
- Volume: Capture more foot traffic by catering to in-store shoppers who are exploring online. Also capture the online shoppers who don’t want to shop in-store and drive e-commerce revenue.
- Avoid misconceptions: Transparency leads to fewer hits to your reputation, like costly consumer assumptions over pricing, availability or sophistication of your business.
As we head into another presidential election year, it’s important to evaluate your online presence and your marketing dollars to ensure budgets are being allocated appropriately to maximize your revenue.
If you’d like to know more about what goes into making your site transactional, we’re here to help. Reach out to me at Anastasia.Stefanova@avb.net for a consultation on how this might impact your business. And be on the lookout for our next article, in which we’ll cover the shared challenges and misconceptions retailers have around pricing furniture and taking payments online.
Anastasia Stefanova is director of marketing/home furnishings at AVB Marketing, the advertising, e-commerce and digital marketing arm of YSN publisher AVB BrandSource. Contact Ana at Anastasia.Stefanova@avb.net.
