Our Approach
Site Customization and Setup
We will implement a site that is customized around your unique business with a "look and feel" that portrays your corporate identity and with important pages that help site visitors understand who you are and why they should do business with you. The site will be search engine optimized for your product and service offerings as well as for your marketplace.
As part of our setup process, we will customize your web catalog to match your corporate identity, with colors, fonts, buttons and more. We will either copy style and theme elements from your existing website, or work with your creative personnel to integrate your own graphic elements into the catalog site.
We will begin the site setup and customization process with a strategy session in order to gain an understanding of your company and your marketplace. We will work together to determine your company's unique preferences and needs in terms of product selection, visual site design, store and company specific information, and keyword phrases for search engine optimization. We will optimize your site around your company's products, services, locations, brands, and marketplace.
Non-Competing Markets
Our goal is to partner with furniture retailers in geographic markets and product ranges that do not directly compete with each other. That way, we will be able to share and spread many of the fixed costs of software and content management across a number of companies.
Would you like to have the "most useful" furniture website in your market? Please contact us to see if we are currently looking for a dealer partner in your area. If you've got a strong business, we'd love to hear from you.
Our Furniture Focus
If you say "furniture website" many people think the opportunity is to improve the transaction - essentially make it easier for consumers to purchase the products. This is not the case for furniture. The big opportunity for furniture is to make it easy for people to find products and get information. People use the internet to conduct research about products to purchase. Furniture shopping is a time consuming and labor intensive process that most people don't do too often in their lives. The internet represents an incredible way for retailers to make it easier for customers to conduct decorating and furnishing research. That's what FurnitureDealer.net is all about. Furniture products are very unique. There are many many choices available. Many of the products can be customized in different fabrics or wood types and even with different features. The furniture retail business is an expensive business in many ways - because of high selling costs, high distribution and logistics costs and slow inventory turnover.
A successful furniture website needs to address the unique aspects of furniture products, and it must take into account the large amount of information that customers and salespeople need to solve their decorating problems. FurnitureDealer.net has built a web solution and has an approach that is specific to furniture, and it works.
A lot of money has been spent trying to sell and market furniture online. I can tell you first hand that I don't think that selling furniture online all across the country is not a sustainable business model. I don't think furniture will be successfully sold through sites like Amazon.com that are far better at selling smaller ticket items and products that are less complicated for consumers to purchase. I don't think retail furniture stores, retail furniture salespeople or retail furniture advertising will go away. Click Here to see more on this subject. The Internet will not eliminate the brick and mortar furniture store. It will however, dramatically impact our industry - in ways that aren't even imaginable at this time. I can tell you first hand as a consumer and as an online furniture retailer that the Internet is really useful to help people shop for furniture. The Intenet is an opportunity if you get involved and you figure out how your company can use it to better compete and better serve customers in your marketplace. The Internet is a threat if your competitors figure out how to do this before and better than you do.
Much Faster, Much Better, Much More Affordable...
You could spend tons of money and research on a web site and still fail. FurnitureDealer.net can get you there for a fraction of the cost, in less time, and implement a superior solution. Many have tried to sell furniture online, but few have succeeded. FurnitureDealer.net has an online furniture solution and approach that works.
FurnitureDealer.net has spent 10 years developing and refining this concept. We have conducted tons of research, including: focus groups, user studies, and detailed surveys. We have personally worked with and assisted thousands of customers shopping for furniture online, worked with hundreds of retail furniture salespeople, and developed online product presentations for tens of thousands of products from hundreds of furniture manufacturers. We have visited thousands of e-retail websites (both furniture and non-furniture). The FurnitureDealer.net web site and internet approach is the result of tons of research (direct, consumer, competitive and more), development, trial and error, and refinement. I now have something that works.
FurnitureDealer.net can help you own this space faster and for a lot less money than anyone else can. I have developed a solution and strategies that work.
What can your company achieve through FurnitureDealer.net?
- Attract new customers
- Drive store traffic
- Sell more products by showing more choices
- Sell more products by showing coordinating items
- Close more prospects by making it easier to solve their problems and help them find solutions that meet their needs
- Make it easier for your customers to shop from your company
- Improve your ability to communicate with customers
- Shorten your selling cycle by getting additional decision makers involved remotely.
- Your salespeople can not show pictures and share information with people who are not physically in your store.
- Get opportunities to sell more customers
Critical Success Factors
Below is a list of dealer critical success factors that we've learned from our client experience. The success we've achieved with our internet approach seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things that we can still improve upon.
Senior Management Commitment
This needs to be a priority. All key managers need to learn about this new capability, invest the time to understand it, and think about how to integrate it into their business operating strategies.
Advertising
Need advertising commitment to integrate strong messages in all advertising. The company needs to make a statement that they have a great website and invest in creating awareness in the marketplace! Compelling offers need to be made to get prospects and customers to sign up to receive email.
In-Store
Need in store commitment to awareness and training. (signs, brochures, internet computers, digital cameras, scanners, trained salespeople, and a web focused in-store attitude) It should be obvious to everyone that enters your store or stores that you have a great website and that you give good deals to people who sign up for your email. The website offers an impressive product assortment, so if they couldn’t find it in the store, they need to look online.
Build Email List
Need a commitment to build your email list. You must make a compelling offer to signup, then must make compelling offers in all ongoing email campaigns. I like the idea of a customer loyalty program. Use the Internet to strengthen and build long term profitable customer relationships. Provide useful information and repeat purchase opportunities in emails.
Merchandising
Need merchandising commitment to communicate product additions, subtractions and edits. Assistance with product photos and product descriptions and information is also important. We will need assistance with product content maintenance.
Customer Support
Need a commitment to web customer support. You will need to have a sales and service capability that is well trained and able to assist customers over the telephone and by email. Technology – To the extent your technology can be integrated, you will benefit. Investments may be needed to effectively transform your company in this way.
Pricing
FurnitureDealer.net offers the most cost effective way to successfully extend your furniture business online.
Why owning and running your website can be a bad idea
The FurnitureDealer.net Model is win / win
Our approach is unique. We don't sell websites. If you want an internet solution that will make a real impact on your business, then we think it is a real mistake for most furniture retailers to build or buy a website. That is, unless you have got a lot of financial, technical and human resources. The cost of building, maintaining, updating and promoting a site will all but ensure failure for most retailers in our industry. A serious website that will attract customers, sell furniture and grow your business will require a major commitment and significant ongoing resources.
The FurnitureDealer.net subscription model
That's why we offer a subscription model. We don't really sell websites. We build custom sites for our partners, fill them with products from our ever expanding professionally managed content library, promote them with company specific search engine optimization and email marketing, and manage and improve the technology on an ongoing basis. Our goal is to create long term mutually beneficial (win-win) partnerships.
The benefit of our approach
At the end of the day, our clients will get so much more than buying or building a website outright. Our model is based on specialization and cost sharing. Our team is highly specialized and skilled at creating and running furniture websites. By partnering with retailers, who don't directly compete with each other, we can spread the significant costs out and provide a much superior solution for a lot less cost.
Our subscription cost in most major markets is about the same (or less) per month than a quarter page newspaper ad. Standard pricing plans include an "all inclusive" monthly flat fee plus a one time setup fee. We price our services based on the size of your market(s) and the amount of customization that you require. We ask for multi-year commitments in order to spread our joint investment over a period of years.
What's included in our Gold Net-Salesperson subscription service?
We like to think of our subscription service as being like a "full service" offering. We provide an online furniture catalog that gets customized for your company and your marketplace. We provide product content and ongoing content management so that you can present a vast assortment of the furniture products and brands that your company sells. We provide online marketing services, which includes search engine optimization, email marketing and other online marketing recommendations. We provide software licensing and maintenance, as well as a hosted and managed solution. We even provide ongoing consulting and advice to help you grow and succeed. All of this comes for a very affordable flat monthly fee that costs significantly less than creating or maintaining something like this on your own. Best of all, our approach is proven. We have a track record of success and tremendous internet and furniture retailing "know-how." We think our subscription service is hands down the best value available for furniture retailers. We don't know of any other internet solution that has had the kind of success (not even close) that we have.
We even offer very cost effective, low risk trial periods on our agreements. This gives us an opportunity to start to demonstrate the kind of impact that we will be able to have for your company.
If you would like a quote, please contact us now.
Prices
FurnitureDealer.net offers the most cost effective way to successfully extend your furniture business online. Please contact us now for the most up-to-date pricing information.
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