Design tool reduces returns and boosts conversions at Furniture.com
As many as 15% of the browsers at the re-launched Furniture.com use the interactive planning tool, slightly above expectations, president Carl Prindle tells InternetRetailer.com.
The tool allows shoppers to create an online floor plan and place in it accurately-scaled outlines of furniture pulled from inventory or already in the customer’s home. “One of the most challenging things about designing a room is the issue of scale,” Prindle says. “In a store you are in an environment much larger than the typical room, and even online, you’re limited to the dimensions provided. With the room planner you can add your existing furniture to one of our pieces to see if they work together.”
Since Furniture.com re-launched in April, shoppers have placed merchandise worth some $50 million in their shopping carts, Prindle says, although he won’t reveal how much of that the customers actually purchased. He says the contents of shopping carts turn over to the tune of $500,000 a day.
The planning tool is helping to drive not only online sales but also sales in the showrooms of Furniture.com`s partners, the Levitz and Seaman’s furniture store chains. Furniture.com developed the room planner under an earlier corporate organization. Launched in 1998, it was one of the first of such interactive design tools available in the web’s home product marketplace.
“Home furnishings sites attract many types of customers,” Prindle says. “Some come to the site just to look at pictures and get ideas. Our objective is to move those customers farther down the conversion trail but given the number who come to the site just to browse, getting 10% to 15% to take the next step and design a room online is something we’re pretty happy with.”
Though he didn’t disclose numbers, Prindle says the room planner has helped reduce return rates. And on the showroom sales side, it provides in-store reps in the site’s partner stores with an easy way to supply critical information. “Previously, the best alternative to room planning was a grid-pad sketch, and trying to guess about placement based on the dimensions available on the tag. The fact that we are tied into the retailers’ databases and can provide dimensional information both to the reps and to the customer directly does have a significant impact on conversion,” says Prindle.
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