Create the online furniture store of your dreams: Tricks and tips to sell furniture online
Discover the best tricks to sell furniture online. Furniture is one of the most important elements when it comes to the decoration and functionality of any space. However, since the beginning of the lockdown, many stores went from being physical to the digital world. Selling online is a trend that has been increasing in recent years. That’s why in this blog we will show you all the strategies, tips, and tricks that you need to sell furniture online. Thus, turning your business into a success.
Marketing for everything…
All companies that offer some type of product or service will benefit from marketing, regardless of the sector of your company.
This is because marketing allows the optimization of promotion and communication strategies for the client. Good communication with your target is vital since it allows you to connect with your audience better than the competition would.
Besides, marketing strategies help you to improve the image of your products or services.
This point will lead to customer loyalty and greater credibility. Not only that, but this will also bring a feeling of better quality for the company against others in the market.
What furniture can I sell online?
This is one of the first points that you must touch when starting to sell furniture online. Here, you have to know who you are. Are you a furniture designer? Importer? Maker? Furniture repairman? Do you have a company or do you just do it as a hobby?
Another point that you should take into consideration at the beginning is that, if you are already a physical store, you will need to analyze your current products. Check which your star products are and which aren’t. Your first steps in the digital world should be based on selling what your customers like the most and another small range of products. Don’t try to catalog everything at once, this distracts and confuses customers.
Now, if you are starting your business from scratch, the idea is that you look for furniture that is competitive in terms of price in the competitive market. Besides, try to offer services that are easy to ship and don’t require professional installation. We all like practicality and it’s proven to be one of the best-selling items. Thus, you should start small and easy to increase your sales much easier.
Sell Digital Vs Physical Sales
When deciding which of the two forms of sales is better, it will depend on what you are looking to do with your brand.
However, the idea would be to create a type of strategy that combines both forms of sales.
Selling furniture online allows you to reach a much larger audience, from social media or with an online site.
On the other hand, a physical sale is ideal since many customers feel more comfortable buying a piece of furniture that they can see and touch before paying for it.
What do I do if the clients want to physically see the furniture?
As we mentioned before, many of your customers will want to touch or see the product before purchasing it. This can be a stumbling block for many companies, but it isn’t impossible to achieve. The best thing you can do to make your customer feel more confident is by showing them lots of high-quality images. Some experts recommend approximately five photographs at various angles and close-ups.
Don’t be afraid to get creative with photos, use neutral backgrounds, and also a setting that is ideal for everyone. Besides, if your piece of furniture comes in different colors you can use that as an idea for more photographs.
One of the favorite ways for stores to erase their customer’s doubts regarding the purchase of that new piece of furniture is by offering a return service in the first days after the purchase.
The phenomena of webrooming and showrooming
One of the new trends when it comes to selling large products such as furniture is webrooming. Webrooming occurs when the buyer made a preliminary study of the product before making a purchase.
In this case, what can the seller do in the physical store? Here you must provide added value. It’s no longer enough to inform the customer about product news, you need to give them something else.
On the other hand, you can go to physical stores to find out about certain products but buy them online. This phenomenon is called showrooming and is common in department stores (Target, Costco, Walmart, etc.). In this case, many consumers enter the stores to discover and learn about products that they later purchase online.
Tips for selling furniture online
We want to help you start and increase the sales of your business. That’s why here we explain the most important tricks to sell furniture online:
Do a market study
Before starting to create marketing strategies you should analyze if your furniture business has enough public to be profitable. If you do your study but you are still not sure, ask yourself, does my business have demand and competition? If not, there is no market for you.
Market research will be done with the help of some surveys, live or digital. Besides, you shouldn’t only see if your market is selling, study how and by what means they sell their products.
Keep an eye out for every trend when it comes to online marketing and how brands are constantly changing. Pick a niche that suits the product you are selling.
Look for those tendencies like a surfer who stays in the sea waiting for the wave to arrive to get on it and reach the shore. Don’t forget to use Google Trends to detect market trends based on the words you put in.
Use the most appropriate platform to reach your audience
Each platform has its own function and, although the ideal is to be in all of them, you must know each one very well to know which one your brand fits the best into.
Using one platform or another where you can sell online will depend on your market niche and what type of products you offer or recommend.
In general, the most used platforms to sell furniture online are:
- YouTube: depending on your target audience, you should analyze whether you should create a YouTube account.
- A blog: using a blog with hosting and domain as a platform to reach your audience is the most recommended method and the most used in recent years.
- Landing page: combining this platform with advertising such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads is the best way to generate sales.
- Social media: social media has a greater reach of customers
How do I start my own online store?
Creating an online site can be a very scary thing for many people.
However, getting started with your own online store shouldn’t be scary.
The first step to selling furniture online is that you don’t create an online store from scratch.
Support yourself from platforms like Prestashop, Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce, and others.
Each one has its own special features, but all of them allow you to start with default templates. Thanks to these templates you just have to upload all the necessary information, graphic elements, some settings, pay and that’s it.
Another option is to hire different experienced professionals in the area.
They will help you with the design of your website. You will need a team of developers, designers, and marketing and advertising experts to help you with them.
Remember that your website is your cover letter to potential clients. For them, you should not act as if it were not something of importance. Take your time and invest in a good team to help you expand your online presence.
Stand out from the competition
After you’ve analyzed your market and selected the ideal platforms to start working with your online furniture sales business, it’s time to take the next step. Now is the time for you to stand out from others, you can’t just be another online furniture store.
Try to attract your main consumer with fresh and fun ideas.
Innovate with new strategies, do things differently so that you stand out from your competition. This way you can get their attention to sales or promotional strategies.
Try to create offers that are irresistible for your users and that they stay hooked with the experiences of your brand.
Build trust and create authority
We have already discussed this point before.
Either with the help of a blog or on your social media, you will have to look for ways to generate trust with your potential clients.
Only by doing this will they take the first step of the purchase and, finally, stay with you.
Many factors influence user confidence, but from our point of view these are the most important:
Create useful content, Tricks to sell furniture online
Content is one of the essential elements when it comes to selling furniture online.
Not everything is simple images.
Many people are drawn to the relevant content that these accounts can offer you.
We recommend to attract them with useful content. For example, you can create a blog on how to take care of the furniture.
Show authority in your niche, Tricks to sell furniture online
This point refers to the fact that you must show your company as an expert on the subject of furniture.
If you want your website or blog to be a reference in the world of online shopping, you should show that it has been in the market for a while.
So important is the time that an online business has been in operation that even Google gives more importance to blogs and websites with more years of publication.
Include reviews, opinions, or testimonials, Tricks to sell furniture online
What’s important here is to be authentic. The best way to achieve this is to show the opinions of your past clients.
You can do this with the help of small surveys, photos, or even a video that you can include in your social media and website.
These will offer you two enormous advantages for your sales strategy. The main one would be that you will be more reliable for future customers. On the other hand, you will also have feedback to improve in those aspects that need it.
Use images or videos
Although this point may seem very obvious, it’s necessary to emphasize it.
Many online businesses don’t take into account graphic works and the impact they have.
Simplify your offer and make it irresistible
For you to get more income from your business you must make your sale offer simpler to attract your customer.
You can offer the products or furniture that are the best sellers or in greater demand for the people within your niche.
Remember that in business you must create a sense of need to purchase a product. If we add an offer to that, many clients will look for you more.
Automate online sales to make them more scalable
The best way to get ahead of online sales is by anticipating what your customer wants.
This is a great advantage of online tools and how they can help you get more sales.
Here are several ways in which you can optimize sales and anticipate them:
Creating ways to get new followers or subscribers to your page online with contests or extra elements that you only get when you subscribe.
- Create sales funnels to sell online to your mailing list through email marketing.
- Develop a landing page with the offer of your star product.
- Use marketing and advertising campaigns to increase your visibility on social media or even in mass media.
Extra strategies for selling furniture
Here are some strategies that you can apply if your customers feel more comfortable with the physical looks of the product first before purchasing:
Ship to store (store pickup)
Many customers prefer to collect the products in the store or in the place where the furniture is, instead of making a delivery.
This has many advantages for the brand since you save a lot of money in logistics.
Another advantage is that the buyer will be in direct contact with you or with your store, this being a reason for the customer to return and build loyalty with your brand.
Get contacts within the store
For many years, furniture salespeople have had to collect customer data to get to know them better.
Today, thanks to the new technologies, this is much easier than it used to be.
Now, you can use monitors so that your users leave their data in exchange for offers. On the other hand, with the help of the website they can be added with their data.
Schedule delivery
Even if you do not have a physical store, you can still find a way to schedule the delivery of the furniture.
Make sure to deliver it to a place that best suits your buyer.
Many of the frustrations on the part of digital buyers are related to excessively long delivery times, delays, and dates not specified, etc.
Digital coupons
This point can be connected with several of the previous strategies and tricks.
By offering digital coupons you can exploit two things: the sale of the products and the traffic of your website. This in turn positions you much better in the market. Thus, Google will place you among the first search links for furniture sales in your area.
With technology, we can do many new and fun things. Instead of handing out paper coupons to the first person on the street, they can be distributed online to a targeted audience.
These digital coupons will then be sent to the physical store. Its effectiveness is very easy to measure and the reception from consumers is usually very positive.
Blended marketing
The term blended marketing means the union of both online and offline marketing strategies.
This term is known to those campaigns that integrate digital marketing techniques with the virtues of traditional media.
Online and offline actions complement each other. An example could be giving the possibility of paying for a piece of furniture with tweets or Facebook comments.
In addition to offering discounts in exchange for recommendations on digital media.
Beacon Technology
Beacon technology has been in use for a few years and allows for very interesting interactions within stores. The way this works is through communication between small devices and the client’s phone through Bluetooth. However, the user must have previously downloaded an app for this to work.
Imagine that you enter a store and once you approach a piece of furniture a message appears on your cell phone. This message then contains information about that specific piece of furniture. Then you get another message with an invitation so that you remember to follow the store on social media. And just before leaving, it reminds you that they have a discount for pieces of a new collection. Thus, if you want to get this discount you must subscribe to their business website.
This technology has many advantages. One of them, and maybe the most important, is that with it you will retain customers. For this, it allows you to create personal profiles with their tastes and preferences. With this information, it will be easier for you to launch more personalized communication actions. As a result, these will turn the consumer into a recurring customer.
NFC technology
NFC stands for near field communication, a short-range wireless technology for many phones.
This is used by many brands to create a whole new shopping experience in physical establishments. This way, every time a customer brings their cellphones to a product, they receive new information.
This should not be confused with Beacon technology. While this kind of technology allows you to know product information, with the other you get extra information. Tricks to sell furniture online. Thanks to this, you can create lists of your client’s favorite products and reach to their emails with news about them.
Apps to use at home
Thanks to the trend of using apps for the world of furniture, many companies decided to use these platforms.
They aim to sell online or advise people to design. The most famous apps of this kind come from companies like Westwing Home & Living.
With the other group of apps, you can use some kind of virtual reality. This way, you can add the furniture you want to match to your real environment.
When taking photos of the space you want to decorate, these applications allow you to see the furniture in your home before buying it. These can also work for furniture companies that sell refurbished products.
BluCactus, your ally in Digital marketing
BluCactus international marketing agency serves clients all over the world.
Our specialty? The creation of web designs and SEO positioning in online searches. Besides, our group of experts is dedicated to helping businesses and brands succeed in one of the most competitive sectors in the market, the digital world.
BluCactus will accompany you every step that your brand takes.
Tricks to sell furniture online. This goes from the creation of the branding of your business to the creation of content.
Our focus is on supporting you with the development of your website or the administration of your accounts on social media.
This online marketing agency, based in Dallas, TX, seeks to strengthen your image as a brand and take it to the next level.
Don’t wait any longer to have the help of the best specialists in digital marketing and contact us through our social media or website.
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