On Boxing Day, Furniture Village welcomed 29,433 people across its 40 UK stores – up nearly 5% from the same time in 2012. In-store transactions on the day saw an increase of 19% compared to 2012, and online transactions almost doubled, with 71,007 people visiting the site on Boxing Day alone.
Furniture Village offered early bird offers on products from its dining, living room, and bedroom ranges, including classic British brands such as Duresta, G Plan, and Ercol.
The retailer reports that the Winter Sale, which began on the 23rd of December, saw an increase in people visiting the e-tail site from mobiles and tablets, with a 70% increase from mobile devices and an almost 40% rise in people visiting the site from a tablet compared to last year.
In November 2013, almost 80% of those purchasing offline previously visited the Furniture Village website. The first three weeks of December 2013 saw a 34.59% increase in website visits and a 17.84% increase in product views.
In terms of the product types that visitors have been viewing online in the run-up to the Boxing Day sale: 58% viewed an upholstery product; 18% viewed bedroom products; and 17% viewed dining furniture.
According to Furniture Village, the dining furniture figures are significant, because typically these are purchased for new properties – for a fifth of website visitors to be looking at this sector suggests that a portion of consumers are thinking about house moves or first purchases, a figure far higher than last year's equivalent.
Charlie Harrison, marketing and e-commerce director, says: “Naturally, Furniture Village’s core business is in big-ticket items and all of our upholstery, dining and beds ranges have performed well during autumn. Over the past five years, the economic climate has prompted people to be conservative in their spending, but with a gradual improvement in the housing market there are definite signs that consumer confidence is returning, and we expect that the demand for big ticket items will further increase, both in-store and online.”
