What do you think? From emerging trends to the latest business principles, Furniture News is setting out to gauge the trade’s feelings on a variety of industry-specific topics. Today, we’re asking our panel: What’s the most frustrating aspect of online shopping?
Wayne Robbins, Iconography: Pop-ups
Garry Preston, TR Hayes: It’s impossible speak to a human particularly if things go wrong. It’s purposely designed this way. And it’s accepted … when in traditional shopping it wouldn’t be tolerated
Jan Duckworth, Cox & Cox: Speed and non-existent navigation when faced with way too many options! Or too complex a journey to get to the one thing you’re looking for. I’m outta there …
Clare Bailey, The Retail Champion: Shocking user experience/navigation, a lack of sensible within-site search/filters, and poor images/product information (so I don’t feel confident buying as returns are inevitably a hassle as well if the item doesn’t live up to expectations!)
Steve Adams, Mattress Online: In our mattress ecommerce sector, it’s price and margin erosion – when times get tough it’s tempting to sell on price for traffic generation. With online search and personalised shopping being so transparent, then it’s an easy (and desperate) race to the bottom
Paul Groves, sales agent: It’s not much of an experience buying online, it’s a transaction mostly decided by price. I’m enjoying watching disruptive brands ripping up the rulebook on social media
Peter Harding, Fairway Furniture: Whether or not it’s because I live in the South West, the inconsistency around delivery timescales is infuriating. If you make a big play of ‘next-day delivery’, make sure it is next day. Too often, we in the South West receive service worse than average
Steve Pickering, Sussex Beds: When I have to create an account, verify it via email, and solve three CAPTCHA puzzles just to browse
Bernard Eaton, Greenwood Retail: Perception
Andy Stockwell, Kuhn Rikon UK: Lack of real human interaction. I generally steer clear of online shopping, but when I’ve no other option or I’m researching ahead of purchase, it seems every website these days has a chatbot which it tries to get you to engage with. I still can’t understand why consumers wouldn’t want to physically experience furniture or beds before making a purchase
This article featured in July's issue.
