The Key to Increasing Sales for Online Furniture Retailers
So, admit it. You’ve shamelessly taken one of those silly online quizzes. I mean, who isn’t secretly curious to see which Disney princess or Marvel superhero they really are? People like gaining insight into themselves, especially when it relates to one’s personal style and how others perceive them. Believe it or not, the hugely popular online quiz phenomena may be the secret for online furniture retailers to increase sales!
Taking a quiz on an online furniture retailer’s website has been proven to engage the customer to learn more about their own design style, while simultaneously, giving the furniture retailer personal insight into that buyer’s journey. PERQ Convert offers furniture retailers online quizzes to assess a customer’s design preferences, mattress fit or sofa style. By serving up furniture that matches a customer’s tastes, hobbies and current stage of life, a retailer can help narrow down the search funnel and guide the online shopping experience for them. Research also shows the longer a shopper engages with a store’s website, the more likely they are to buy from that store. PERQ Convert’s research shows interactive experiences increase engagement time from an average of 3 minutes per session to 12 minutes or higher.
Online furniture retailers that utilize software with online quizzes and research tools that engage with consumers paired with the right lead follow up strategy, has been proven to be the key to increasing sales.
Improve Customer Engagement, Improve Sales
By answering a few quiz questions, such as how you spend your free time and the types of gatherings you prefer to host, the customer gains insight into their own personal style. Is your home artistic or innovative? Is it more comfortable and laid-back where everyone gathers for game day? Or do you host sophisticated dinner parties and wine and cheese nights?
The customer uses the quiz as a research tool to learn more about their own style and what furniture works best in their particular household. Online furniture retailers use the information collected through the customer’s answers to prepare an effective sales strategy to meet them where they are in life and when they’re ready to buy.
Give Customers Online Research Tools, Increase Showroom Visits
Need to buy a new mattress, and don’t even know where to start? Is your mattress just old, or do you want to improve your sleep? How about those nagging back pains you wake up with every morning? Is an innerspring mattress better for a back sleeper than a hybrid or memory foam? How about a new sofa? Will it be mainly used for entertaining guests? Do you prefer a certain sofa style in your man cave versus the family room? Do your hobbies and lifestyle affect what style of sofa works in your home? Smart shoppers ask many, MANY questions and conduct extensive research before they ever step into a furniture showroom. Does your website help them answer those questions and narrow down their choices so they can reach a buying decision? If it doesn’t, your furniture store is likely missing out on potential customers.
By giving website visitors research tools that provide a starting point on what to look for and where to find it, which ultimately inspires more trust for your store’s brand and higher inclination to visit your showroom. Research shows that 70 percent of furniture shoppers visit a furniture store’s website before going to a physical showroom, and they now visit only 1.8 showrooms, instead of five or six, before buying. Most online furniture retailers don’t offer a research tool and fail to give customers what they want when they want it during the online research phase of their buying journey.
Follow Up on Leads At Right Time With Right Strategy
Static contact forms on a furniture store’s website provide a name, phone number and email address. However, they give salespeople little insight into which items the customer may have been looking for on the website or whether they’re ready to buy now or in six months. With PERQ Convert’s interactive software, the leads become relevant data with specific information to act upon now or at a later date.
For instance, a customer shares their interest in a comfortable sofa for the living room in earth tones; but they don’t want to buy for six months. Using the assessment data, the store can target that customer with specialized incentives, sales or discounts for that comfy couch as part of a marketing strategy or email drip campaign. Maybe your furniture store wants to focus only on customers who are ready to buy now? The PERQ Convert assessment strategies work for that purpose as well, extracting only bottom, end-of-the-funnel leads that your sales team can immediately focus on and convert to sales.
“Establishing a clear strategy for how to follow up on the influx of leads generated by the assessments also makes a difference”, says Joey Gunn, Vice President of Knight Furniture & Mattress in Sherman and Gainesville, Texas. “If you mishandle, it can really hurt your brand,” he says. “We drowned the first month, but we took that and learned from it.” Knight Furniture & Mattress personalized its email templates to respond to each kind of customer, no matter where they are in the sales funnel. “If someone identifies themselves as just looking, and you send an email meant for an end-of-funnel customer, it can seem aggressive,” Gunn says, adding that his sales team wanted to keep the personalized approach because they know it works.
Another approach that works for some retailers involves offering something extra to the customer who takes an assessment on your website. Gallery Furniture in Houston takes the “What’s My Design Style?” information one step further by allowing customers to sign up for a design consultation in their homes. The two-pronged approach has generated phenomenal sales, says Gallery Furniture’s Analytics Director Dan Marchione, pointing to the store’s average monthly increase of 2,091% in web registrations and 380% increase in web visitor session duration.
Start Online to Close The Deal In The Showroom
Engaging with furniture customers through online quizzes entices them to stay on your site longer, share more information about their buying journey, and gain trust to visit your store’s showroom. The longer they stay and the more you know about them gives your furniture sales staff the best tools to close the deal. PERQ Convert’s personalized, guided shopping experience ultimately drives more showroom traffic. Giving consumers a high level of service on your website will drive more showroom traffic leading to more sales.