At a time when ecommerce sales make up nearly a fifth of total retail sales, with an annual growth rate of +15%, retailers can’t afford to have a sub-par website, states Cylindo’s Biljana Vidojevic, who presents the results of an investigation of the online capabilities of Europe’s top furniture retailers.
Even traditional industries like furniture are finally waking up to the new reality – online presence matters. Today, the furniture purchase journey starts online for more than 70% of consumers, and worldwide online sales are expected to grow at an average annual rate of +11.9% between 2018-22, resulting in a market volume of $294b in 2022.
As customer expectation for the ideal online shopping experience increases, ecommerce furniture merchandising becomes increasingly important. Betting on reinventing the online furniture-buying journey and incorporating a highly digital footprint pays dividends across multiple parameters. It helps retain customers and grow their lifetime value while acquiring new ones, which is critical in any over-retailed market.
But how much attention must European furniture retailers pay to their digital merchandising and online shopping experience? We’ve analysed the websites of 100 top retailers, looking at 10 features including zoom, 360° views, room scenes, customisation, page load speed, mobile optimisation, augmented reality (AR), video, recommendations, and reviews.
Our research included some of the largest furniture retailers in the UK and the rest of Europe (determined by most significant forecast annual revenue, sizeable product catalogue, and physical store footprint). Here are some of our findings …
Online presence matters
The companies that have more than five ecommerce merchandising features on their websites are leading the way in digital merchandising and user experience (UX). Of the top 100 European retailers, 67% have five or more.
The global village
It’s interesting to note that there aren’t huge differences between the findings in our Europe and US reports (the latter was conducted in February 2019). Most of the features have a similar adoption rate among retailers.
There is a slight difference in the zoom feature, which is more widely adopted in the US (83%) than in Europe (68%). On the other hand, product customisation is adopted by 67 of the top 100 European retailers, compared with just 42% of their US counterparts.
Investment is not aligned with customer preferences
Only 13% of retailers have 360° product configurators on their websites, leaving the vast majority without this feature. In a world where digital plays a vital role in furniture sales, 360° views are becoming a minimum requirement for a good online UX.
Web-native AR is redefining furniture shopping
Only 22% of the top European retailers have implemented an AR solution. However, the high user adoption rate of web-native AR is a clear sign that this frictionless solution will change the way people shop for furniture in the near future.
Mobile browsing is the new normal
According to our research, all the top European furniture retailers have mobile-optimised websites.
The balance between speed and UX
Visitors love content-rich sites, but they will not waste their time if your page is slow. For the best results, find the right balance between the two.
Context and recommendations are important to sales
Room scenes, recommendations and mobile optimisation are the three most widely adopted features among the top European retailers, and this is true for the US as well. This isn’t too surprising when one considers that furniture is a big-ticket item and customers need more time to make the final decision – context and recommendations from other buyers are always helpful.
Analysing retailers’ ecommerce merchandising features
In industries like furniture, where product aesthetics and details have a major influence on the customer’s purchasing decision, you have to take care of your web presence, as it’s often the first touchpoint made with your company.
Zoom
Customers want to inspect details like material and texture. When they can’t interact with the images on product pages, they don’t feel comfortable buying, and they often decide to leave the website and search for another product.
Even though too much zoom can put the product out of perspective, in the furnishing industry zooming extremely closely will help show the texture.
However, despite the fact that this is one of the most important features for furniture merchandising, only 68 of the top European retailers have zoom features on their product pages, and only 20 have the zoom option in fullscreen mode. When it comes to the type of zoom, 39 have a zoom on hover, and 29 have a click-to-zoom option.
Product customisation
Today, technology makes it easier to enable product customisation, and to offer a personalised experience to customers straight from your product pages.
Giving consumers the ability to combine colours, fabrics, finishes and other details in a few clicks with a simple product configurator can enhance their experience and increase your conversions. Thanks to advanced technologies, this differentiating tool can boost satisfaction and loyalty while enabling the scalable mass-customisation of home furnishings.
An interesting finding is that 67 of Europe’s top 100 have a configurator for product customisation on their website, compared to only 42 of the US retailers from our previous report.
This feature is especially important for retailers that offer a lot of product variations. Bearing in mind customer expectations, retailers have to prioritise customisation if they want to increase engagement in both online and digitally influenced sales.
360° views
When it comes to the online furniture purchase journey, an outstanding visual experience is the best way to compensate for the lack of tactile sense. Shoppers want a 360° view of anything they’re going to buy, and images undoubtedly tell more of a story than product descriptions ever could.
Google’s metrics have shown that consumers interact four times longer with 360° spin than conventional product photos alone. Studies have also shown that 360° views reduce return rates, because customers can get a better view of the product they’re purchasing.
One of the most significant discrepancies between consumer expectation and retailer investment is the implementation of 360° views on product pages. Only 13% of the retailers we’ve analysed have 360° product configurators on their website – the same proportion as in the US top 100.
It’s no surprise that most of the companies that have 360° product configurators on their websites are D2C because, in most cases, these are digital-native companies that understand the importance of online presence. Today, when digital already drives more than a third of online retail sales – and further influences a high percentage of in-store sales – having 360° views becomes a minimum requirement for a pleasant online UX.
Room scenes
It’s much easier to sell products when you show them being used. According to BigCommerce, 78% of online shoppers want products to be brought to life with images. No matter if it’s jewellery, a purse, sofa or car, context gives shape and meaning, which helps assuage shoppers’ fears about usage, aesthetics and size.
Combining elements to create an in-context photo will help you convey a certain quality, tone or mood that will influence the viewer’s perception of your product, ultimately leading to a higher conversion rate.
This is one of the top three most widely adopted features – 90% of the furniture retailers analysed have room scenes on their product pages, and this is one of the best-adopted features among US retailers, too, with 93 of the top 100 using room scenes to enrich the product page experience.
Augmented reality (AR)
What was once only hype is now slowly becoming a reality. According to Gartner, by 2020 a whopping 100 million consumers will shop using AR online and in-store. This is yet another confirmation that AR has huge potential to disrupt the way people shop. Soon AR will become an inevitable part of a buyer’s path to purchase, especially in the furniture industry.
However, when it comes to AR adoption, one of the biggest challenges is the usage of mobile apps – so how can AR go mainstream? With web-native AR, consumers can visualise products without leaving your website, paving the way for more conversions. App-less AR has proven to provide adoption rates that are 33 times higher than traditional AR mobile applications, thanks to the reduced friction.
In the future, as we see increased usage of AR in everyday life, the ability to access AR instantly without the need to install an app will become vital. For now, even though AR is one of the hottest topics in the furniture industry, only 22% of the top European retailers have implemented an AR solution – slightly higher than the 16% of US retailers.
It will be interesting to see how web-native AR solutions change the furniture landscape, as it’s far more straightforward and user-friendly for consumers, and doesn’t require them to download an app.
Video
Videos are fun to watch, easy to consume, and, most importantly in the case of product videos, prompt more purchases. According to HubSpot, 73% of customers are more likely to purchase after watching an online video that explains the product or service, and more than half of shoppers say that online video has helped them decide which specific brand or product to buy, so it’s clear that having high-quality videos creates trust and empowers people to take action.
This popular type of content is still not widely adopted among the top European furniture retailers – only 26 of them have videos for some of their products. This is slightly higher than their US counterparts (24/100), but with all the statistics in mind, we expect to see an increase soon.
Reviews
Product ratings and reviews have become significant purchase decision factors. Would you buy a product with a low product rating and negative reviews? Probably not. Data from Spiegel Research Center shows that nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase.
When it comes to big-ticket purchases like furniture, product reviews are even more important. According to eMarketer, when researching an expensive item online, online ratings and reviews are the most common source respondents consulted – moreso than word-of-mouth, in-store sales associates, or social networks.
Our research shows that 41 of the top European retailers have reviews on their product pages, which means more than half of them don’t allow customers to share feedback. The US retailers perform better in this category – 56% of them have product reviews.
Product recommendations
New Epsilon research shows that 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer a personalised experience, and 90% indicate that they find personalisation appealing.
One of the most basic forms of personalisation is product recommendation. Consumers love recommendations, and it also increases the conversion rate. Research from Salesforce shows that shoppers that clicked on recommendations are four-and-a-half times more likely to add these items to their cart, and also four-and-a-half more likely to complete the purchase. They also spend more time on the site – 12.9 minutes, compared to only 2.9 minutes for those who didn’t click on recommendations.
As in our Top 100 US Furniture Retailers Report, recommendations are one of the top three most widely adopted features – 89% of the European retailers analysed have some sort of recommendation on their product pages. Most are about related products from the same collections, but a few companies have advanced recommendation engines for a more personalised experience.
Mobile optimisation
From browsing and research to comparison and purchase, mobile is integral to the way consumers shop nowadays. This is why mobile optimisation is a must for every furniture retailer, no matter if they are traditional or digital-first.
Back in 2016, Google confirmed that more than 50% of all web traffic was coming from smartphones and tablets, so it’s no surprise that they have shifted indexing from desktop to mobile-first.
What’s more, mobile is not only important for online shopping. A consumer shopping study from BRP-Windstream Enterprise shows that mobile is leveraged in almost half of all in-store shopping experiences. Of the 46% of consumers that use their mobile device in-store, 83% compare prices, 78% look at reviews, and 76% check local store inventory. When mobile retail experiences are frictionless, consumers are more likely to go a step beyond research and actually buy on their device.
It’s no surprise that every company in our top 100 has an optimised mobile website. If we look at the US top 100, of which 98% have optimised sites, we can see that having this feature is a must for our mobile-first world.
Page load speed
Visitors love content-rich sites, but they will not waste their time if your page is slow. No matter how good the design of your website, how attractive your products or competitive your prices are, if your page is slow, you’re going to lose visitors.
According to Google, a one-second delay in load time can impact conversion rates by up to -20%. To measure the page load speed and web performance of the top 100 European retailers, we used Web Page Test – and 73 of these retailers have a load speed below 10 seconds.
Having a fast site is a minimum requirement in the ecommerce game. However, retailers adopting more digital merchandising features will not only attract more customers, but will win more significant market share by creating a trustworthy and enjoyable shopping experience – so always bear in mind the importance of balancing speed and quality.
Visit our website to read our full report – featuring an action checklist, benchmarks, and best-in-class industry players by feature.
