In terms of growth, furniture, and appliances represented the No. 5 top-grossing digital commerce category last year, according to Comscore’s 2023 State of Digital Commerce Report.
Online shopping is getting a strong foothold, creating new opportunities and challenges for retailers. The question is: how can furniture businesses adapt to reach consumers in this shifting landscape?
Cylindo researched the hottest e-commerce trends and came up with a list of nine factors that will move the needle for furniture businesses in 2023 and beyond.
3D commerce
Retailers will need to move beyond the current 2D focus of e-commerce to prepare for a more immersive future of shopping. Equipping your product pages with 3D visuals allows customers to view them from any angle, rotate, and zoom in on the details. Going a step further, using augmented reality (AR), customers can place a 3D object in their space to see how it fits.
3D technology is the backbone of futureproof visualization and the foundation for 3D commerce. When done right, 3D visualization creates assets with unparalleled quality and versatility that you can leverage across channels and platforms, building a unified omnichannel experience.
There’s no doubt that 3D commerce is the future of shopping. From improved visualization and engagement to higher conversion rates and pleasant shopping experiences, 3D technology will be the frontier of commerce for the years to come.
Mobile experience
Mobile is fast becoming the most critical part of the omnichannel experience. To remain competitive, retailers need to do more than create a mobile responsive website.
According to Statista, in 2023, the number of global smartphone users is estimated to reach 6.8 billion, marking a 4.2% annual increase. This makes mobile an essential touchpoint in the buyer journey.
Mobile is an integral part of how consumers shop nowadays, from browsing and research to comparison and purchasing. According to Google, 60% of home and garden shoppers use mobile searches for ideas about what to buy before they head into a store. This is why having an exceptional mobile experience is a must for every furniture retailer, whether traditional or digital-first.
Customizable lifestyle imagery
Context is everything in furniture visualization. If you want to tell a story, there is no better way than using lifestyle imagery. The benefit is not only that you are promoting multiple products at once, but you help customers visualize how the piece of furniture complements the setting.
Research from Baymard shows that 42% of users attempt to gauge the overall scale and size of a product from its product images. By providing in-scale images, you make it easier for customers to get a grasp of the product size.
Even though the process of creating room scenes was costly and time-consuming in the past, thanks to 3D, creating in-context imagery is much more cost-effective because you don’t have to transport furniture all around the world just for a photoshoot. The best part is that you can show off your products in context and at scale with customizable lifestyle imagery.
Last-mile experience
The explosive growth of e-commerce since the start of the pandemic has brought another challenge for businesses — high customer expectations for a seamless end-to-end shopping experience. According to Baymard, slow delivery is one of the top three reasons for cart abandonment.
Aware of the importance of fulfillment, retailers are ramping up their investments in automation solutions to improve last-mile carrier management, dispatching and routing, real-time visibility, planning warehouse and fulfillment center logistics, driver communication, and smooth omnichannel expansion.
One of the main goals of furniture retailers should be to increase supply chain resilience in the face of the unexpected. Moving forward, logistics and timely delivery will become a significant competitive advantage for furniture businesses. […]
Omnichannel experience
The rise of omnichannel has brought new rules to retail. Customers want to be able to shop anywhere, anytime, and on any device with a consistent experience. It’s not a bricks-vs.-clicks world or one device versus another. Consumers are channel-agnostic — they just want a seamless shopping journey, bouncing between online and offline along the path to purchase.
This means one thing: In order to keep up in 2023 and beyond, your job is to create consistent, engaging experiences across every touchpoint.
Putting omnichannel at the heart of your business means creating a cohesive, seamless, personalized shopping experience by giving your customers multiple ways to interact with your brands. And looking at how retail is evolving — it’s the only way forward.
Customer reviews
Product ratings and reviews have become major purchasing decision factors. According to PowerReviews, 98% of consumers consider reviews an essential resource when making purchasing decisions. The greatest portion of consumers (53%) read between one and 10 reviews.
For big-ticket purchases like furniture, product reviews are even more important. As reported by eMarketer, when researching an expensive item online, online ratings and reviews were the most common sources respondents consulted, more so than word of mouth, in-store sales associates, or social networks.
As more furniture businesses deploy this influential social proof in their e-commerce experience, more informative and detailed reviews aren’t just helpful — they can help you drive higher conversion. Plus, thoughtful reviews are essential for building trust, a metric intrinsically linked to ROI and retention.
Conversational commerce
The explosive growth of social media in the past decade has brought a tectonic shift in the way people communicate. Social media has popularized a quick and simple way of communicating, which resulted in the rise of messaging apps, putting text messaging well ahead of phone calls. According to Spectrm’s social conversational commerce report, 60% of respondents prefer messaging over email or phone calls.
Thanks to conversational commerce, customers can have conversations with businesses, ask questions, or make a purchase without going through conventional online and offline channels. Removing the friction in the path to purchase creates a more convenient way for customers to shop, creating a better experience and ultimately increasing customer loyalty.
It’s estimated that by 2025, global spending on conversational commerce channels will grow to 290 billion U.S. dollars. As technology continues to evolve, we’re likely to see more tech-savvy furniture businesses that will incorporate conversational commerce into their marketing efforts and reap the rewards.