Housewares/Home Furnishings

Perfecting the in-store feel

Internet Retailer Best of the Web 2007

Chiasso.com
Cooking.com
LumberLiquidators.com
WSHome.com

Few retailers face more challenges in setting up web sites than those selling housewares and home furnishings. That’s because most shoppers find it hard to picture how a certain sofa or floor covering will look in a room without seeing the actual item. And considering the high prices of much of the merchandise, it’s critical that customers see value.

Savvy online retailers in this category tackle the problem by trying to recreate the look and feel of an in-store visit. And they’re doing it with a combination of state-of-the-art merchandising technology and an eye for visual appeal.

At Chiasso.com, a sofa is shown not only as a stand-alone piece of furniture but also in a room setting. Customers also have access to multiple views of a product—in some cases from the front, rear and sides—rather than a single static image. The site also enables shoppers to get a view of a product right down to the color and fabric.

At LumberLiquidators.com, the in-store feel comes in the form of its Floor Finder feature, which provides online shoppers the ability to decide what’s best for their project and budget by asking questions about installation type, color and price range. That can be a major draw for shoppers struggling to sift through myriad options. Should they go with solid hardwood, engineered or laminate? Should it be pre-finished, unfinished or hand-scraped?

Sometimes online technology enables retailers to provide a wider assortment of products than can be found in stores. That’s the case at Williams-Sonoma Inc., which launched a site dedicated to its premium home furnishings brand. The expanded selection also has more than 100 designer fabrics and 30 unique silhouettes.

The Williams-Sonoma Home site also features a comprehensive furniture preview tool and visual images, including up to 24 image views on some products pages, ranging from room settings to product detail. The site also features a furniture preview tool that lets shoppers try out upholstery options on different furniture frames.

To be sure, there always will be consumers who prefer the in-store shopping experience when buying housewares and home furnishings. But retailers that know how to recreate that experience online will surely find a ready audience.

When it launched in 1999, home décor retailer Chiasso’s site didn’t quite reflect its name, the Italian word for “causing a sensation.” That came in fall 2005, when Chiasso did a top-to-bottom redesign. Now the site is not only a place for buying housewares and furnishings, it also serves as a showroom and a forum for exchanging ideas.

After the redesign, customers have access to multiple views of a product—in some cases from the front, rear and sides—rather than a single static image. And they can view a sofa in a room setting and as a stand-alone product. The site also enables shoppers to get a close-up view of a product, right down to the fabric.

“The site we had before was sort of patched together,” says Jerry Bergquist, information technology manager. “We’d make an improvement here, make an improvement there. This redesign was to try to get a whole new look and feel for the site.”

Chiasso.com also has features designed to draw customers back to the site, including product reviews and design contests. The site recently posted photos of winning room designs submitted by customers to its “Show Us Your Chiasso” contest.

“That’s pretty cool,” says Shari Altman, president of Altman Dedicated Direct. “It makes it real for the customer to see how the items were used in a real person’s home.” Chiasso further takes advantage of the contest by creating links to the items featured in the photos, she says.

“In general, the home page is very clean and clear and makes it easy to figure out where you want to go,” Altman says. But Chiasso could do a better job of playing up the “Sale of the Day” on the home page, she says, noting that there was no information or photo of the item. “It’s just a mystery item at a mystery price.”

But adding further to the improvements, Chiasso recently implemented a new hosted site search solution. “Basically,” Bergquist says, “we’re trying to make the whole shopping experience easier for the customer so they can find what they need and have an easy checkout process.”

Online cookware shoppers are a passionate and picky lot. In the kitchen they prefer their work space and ingredients to be just right and the same holds true for the e-commerce sites they frequent.

Over the years, Cooking.com, an online retailer since 1998, has developed a loyal following by building and maintaining an e-commerce site that gives shoppers precisely the merchandise and content they’re looking for. Cooking.com offers web shoppers a cleanly organized web site and a wide assortment of merchandise that includes 50,000 SKUs. But what gives Cooking.com staying power in a very competitive shopping niche is the site’s innovative use of customer service technology and the ability to gather customer feedback that results in better content, desirable merchandise and more sales.

Throughout its product pages, Cooking.com prominently displays feedback boxes that customers can fill out to submit their comments, questions and complaints. Each month Cooking.com receives about 4,000 submissions which the company uses to plan site improvements and add shopping categories. Taking to heart what customers want pays off. In the past two years the conversion rate on coffee makers has increased by 90% because Cooking.com studied customer comments and then added more than 40 new styles and colors. “Our shoppers are very specific about what they want in the feedback we get from them,” says Cooking.com founder and president Tracy Randall.

Based on specific customer feedback Cooking.com, which expects to generate about $50 million in sales in 2006, has added several merchandising categories, including cookbooks and home organization products. The company is using customer feedback to test live chat, add more videos to its recipe section and position customer product reviews in a way that ranks the most authoritative reviews first. “We feature the customer as the ultimate authority,” Randall says.

Featuring authoritative product reviews and collecting ongoing customer feedback in a way that’s meaningful to shoppers helps Cooking.com stand out, says Manivone Phommahaxay, senior user experience specialist at Molecular Inc. “Customer ratings on product pages gives shoppers a level of trust,” she says. “Cooking.com uses a simple but intuitive approach to its design and clearly labeled product information and promotions.”

Solid hardwood, engineered, laminate? Oak, bamboo, maple or cork? Glue-down or nail-down? Prefinished, unfinished, or, for that colonial look, hand-scraped?

The choices in flooring are myriad and baffling to the novice. Hand it to Lumber Liquidators for simplifying things. With upwards of $300 million in annual flooring sales, the company’s mission is straightforward; its more than 80 nationwide locations are warehouse-like stores in relatively low-rent neighborhoods, crammed to the rafters with floor materials at bargain prices. And its redesigned web site, live since April, captures that simplicity, despite the increasing complexity of the product.

“We try to balance information with the transaction because most people don’t know everything there is to know about flooring,” says Marco Pescara, senior vice president of direct marketing and advertising. The company’s old web site was adequate for contractors and do-it-yourselfers who know their way around a lumberyard, but it scared away homeowners.

No more. The Floor Finder feature provides online shoppers the ability to decide what’s best for their project and budget by posing simple questions about installation type, color and price range. Customers are guided to the products that best fit their needs. “Flooring 101,” a searchable FAQ area, covers installation, floor care and product warranties with a mix of online answers and PDFs to print out for use at a work site. And then there’s Bob, the company’s in-house installer, who’s available by e-mail or 800-number for questions not covered by the FAQs.

Especially for those whose involvement with flooring is occasional rather than professional, the web site and the stores together make a powerful combination, Pescara contends. “It’s much easier for customers to buy from us online knowing that we have stores,” he says. “We can ship directly from our warehouse using FedEx, or they get a list of locations where the product can be picked up.”

Another feature helpful to online shoppers is the “before and after” pictures submitted by customers, says retail consultant Jim Okamura, senior partner at J.C. Williams Group, Chicago. “Our consumer research shows how much consumers respect the input of their peers, and this is a really good way to show it.”

Few retailers are as adept as Williams-Sonoma at enticing consumers with gorgeous visual merchandising. And its brands have frequently been listed in the Internet Retailer Top 50 Best of the Web. So it’s little surprise that the company’s new online launch, Williams-Sonoma Home, is following the same stylish and winning path.

WSHome.com debuted in August as a fully interactive furniture and home décor web site after a year online in catalog form. The company took that year to implement imaging capacity up to the task it would be asked to do—given the high price point of the merchandise, it was critical shoppers see not just the cost but the value of the products. But as the brand has few stores as of yet, it’s less likely the shopper would be able to visit a Williams-Sonoma Home store to make a personal inspection. That leaves it up to the product imagery to try to replicate as closely as possible online the visual experience customers would have in a store.

The new site delivers on that charge, with the ability to show up to 24 additional images on product pages, images ranging from room settings to product detail. A furniture preview tool lets shoppers try out upholstery options on different furniture frames. Seasonal Style, a dynamic editorial guide that highlights selected looks, brings life to the season’s trends.

“The primary focus for us was around the depth of our product imagery, particularly with the price point of the items we were selling,” says Chrissy Ginieczki, director of e-commerce operations for Williams-Sonoma Home. “We really wanted to get across the quality and craftsmanship of what we were offering the customers. We wanted to make sure the customer could almost touch and feel the products online.”

“Williams-Sonoma is a company that we always cite as one that does a great job of extending their brand image through a web site,” says Chad Doiron, strategist in the Internet practice of retail consultants Kurt Salmon Associates. “The quality of the photos, the look and the feel, the focus they take—from a store perspective to an online perspective, the customer feels it’s the same.”