BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Blueport Commerce, the leading cloud e-commerce platform for furniture retail, today announced the release of its annual 2017 Blue(re)port: Omnichannel Furniture Benchmarking. The report looked at over 100 of the nation’s leading furniture websites assessing over 50 different features over eight categories mapped to phases in the shopping journey.
The release of this report coincides with several trends impacting the furniture industry in 2017, from shoppers demanding more seamless experiences to announcements from Amazon seeking to build furniture stores and large format warehouses. Wayfair has also been redoubling its distribution efforts and investments in technology. Likewise, traditional furniture retailers have been compelled to explore the positive sales potential of adding better ecommerce technology to their store advantages. This report answers what makes an ultimate omnichannel furniture shopping experience and ranks retailers who are the closest to providing it.
Carl Prindle, Blueport Commerce Founder & CEO, notes the importance of building an omnichannel ecommerce website for big-ticket items.
“Despite insurgents determined to take the wind out of traditional retailers’ sails, the store channel remains essential in furniture retail and other big-ticket categories like appliances and electronics. Combine a great store with seamless online shopping and you unlock the best shopping experience – and dramatic growth.”
Prindle adds, “In big-ticket categories, the battle is on between traditional retailers racing to develop effective digital strategies and pure plays like Wayfair and Amazon, who are increasingly targeting a larger than $200B segment of retail.”
So, how are furniture retailers faring? The Omnichannel Furniture Benchmarking report found that:
- On average, retailers’ websites have only 31% of the 50 features evaluated
- Of the top-25 features ranked as delivering the most value, retailers on average had only 44% of these features today
- Seven traditional retailers ranked in the report’s top ten, three of them ranking first, second and third
- Only one pure-play retailer ranked in the top ten
- Only one multi-line and one specialty-store retailer were represented in the top ten
To see the full ranking and more key findings, visit blueport.com/benchmarking for a free download of the report.
