According to S&P Global, e-commerce retailers will likely bolster their digital and technology capabilities this year. The investments they make in 2023 will help them further capitalize on online sales as well as drive demand and efficiencies.To help you set the groundwork for future growth, here's a blueprint for e-commerce success in 2023 and beyond.
9 Trends for Furniture E-Commerce Success
In 2021, retail e-commerce revenue from furniture and homeware sales amounted to 132.7 billion U.S. dollars and was projected to increase to over 208.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. Data from Statista shows that furniture and home furnishing sales accounted for 11.78% of total retail e-commerce sales in the United States. The following 9 trends in furniture online business can definitely help the brands reshape their values and grow busines.
1. 3D Commerce
The increase in online shopping raised awareness of an important topic: furniture e-commerce merchandising. Furniture retailers realized how important product visuals are for online furniture sales.
3D Commerce is the new way of shopping powered by the use of 3D product visualization, visual product configuration, and augmented reality to deliver an enhanced shopping experience.
2. Visual Search
Visual search is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables shoppers to upload an image to a retailer’s website and locate visually similar products. According to Invespcro, more than 36% of online shoppers have used visual search, and more than half of them claim visual information is more useful to them than text.
Furniture is an incredibly visual industry. Customers make decisions based on design, style, color, and fabrics. It’s no surprise that furniture is the second most popular category (right behind apparel) where customers use visual search. Data shows that 85% of customers use visual search to find furniture they like.
3. Recommerce
One of the biggest challenges for furniture businesses is e-commerce returns. According to CBRE, the average e-commerce return rate is 30%. Unlike other industries where bracketing (buying multiple sizes of the same item) is a normal way of online shopping, product returns are a real headache for furniture retailers.
What is recommerce?
Recommerce or reverse commerce is the selling of used or previously owned products through marketplaces using the technology and logistics solutions designed to support these processes.
Research from FloorFound reveals that more than 90% of Americans have purchased a resale item online, and 77% of respondents planned to purchase returned or slightly-used furniture in the next year or two.
4. Seamless Checkout Experience
Many furniture businesses put a lot of time and effort into the look and feel of their e-commerce stores to attract new customers and improve the overall buyer’s journey. However, they often tend to overlook the importance of the checkout experience. According to Dynamic Yield, the cart abandonment rate for furniture is 69.79%.
By optimizing the checkout experience to deliver a straightforward and transparent process, retailers can increase their conversions and capitalize on what could otherwise be lost sales.
5. SMS Marketing
SMS marketing is the use of text messages to share information on deals, offers, and important updates to customers directly to their mobile devices. Unlike other channels where regulations are blurry, SMS requires consent and makes it easy to opt out, so customers feel in control of which brands can reach them.
Over the last few years, text has become a valuable differentiator for furniture retailers. It’s time to jump on the bandwagon and leverage the power of this channel to connect with customers in a personalized and measurable way.
6. Buy Now, Pay Later
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is a type of short-term financing that allows consumers to make purchases and pay for them at a future date, often interest-free, according to a definition by Investopedia.
Customers find the BNPL concept as a convenient way of spreading out the cost of their shopping. According to Affirm, more than one in two (56%) U.S. consumers are interested in using a pay-over-time solution in 2022. But here’s where it gets interesting: Nearly half (49%) of consumers won’t complete a purchase if a retailer does not offer a pay-over-time option at checkout.
7. Search Optimization
An e-commerce site search solution is a search engine solution you can integrate into your online store to help customers find the products they are looking for by matching keywords.
While many retailers have come a long way in improving the online shopping experience, there’s still a lot that needs to be done for a frictionless site search. According to Baymard, 61% of sites require their users to search by the exact same product type jargon the site uses. What’s more, 46% of sites don’t support thematic search queries such as “spring jacket” or “office chair
8. User Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is any form of original content created by customers and published on social media or other channels. There are many different UGC forms, including images, videos, product reviews, testimonials, and every other content that promotes your brand.
UGC can be used across all stages of the buyer’s journey to boost engagement and increase conversion. Furniture retailers can use UGC on social media, email, product pages, checkout pages, and many other channels.
9. Digital Transformation
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, including offering buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) and curbside pickup options.
What's Next?
Marvin XR is bringing an end to end 3D/AR solution integration to ecommece furniture companies to help them perform higher, convert better and build a profitable business in a long run with a trusted brand identity built for its customers. We have proven customer cases where 3D/WebAR has helped to increase the conversion rate significantly. Contact us today to get access to the case studies.