The Internet is no longer just a virtual place where you can easily locate a myriad of information, get back in touch with old friends, listen to music: today it is also an immense global market where you buy and sell .
It is no coincidence, therefore, that many entrepreneurs who had started their business with an “offline” business have decided to devote themselves to ecommerce as well . In most cases, this solution does not replace their shop but it complements it , effectively covering a part of the potential market that, otherwise, would be hit by one or more competitors.
If you are also an entrepreneur in the furniture sector and know your sector and its target audience perfectly, online sales could be an excellent solution to expand your business and keep your business in step with the times . In fact, given the new technologies at our disposal, it is undoubtedly worth using the tools of digital marketing to intercept a new portion of potential customers and increase the number of customers and earnings .
Ecommerce of furniture: first rule, to stand out from the others
The basic principle from which to start concerns the capillarity of sales on the web , now valid for practically all sectors – including that of furniture. You will certainly know the huge generalist ecommerce that are the masters on the internet: we are sure that in ten seconds flat you could come up with at least a couple of names known all over the world and, in recent years, also become famous in Italy.
The competition from these giants must of course be held in high regard, and yet it shouldn’t be a deterrent if you’re thinking of starting to sell furniture online . In fact, remember that their horizontal approach to the market is as much their strength as their weakness.
First of all, therefore, keep in mind that if you have innovative and alternative ideas that allow you to distinguish yourself from other players on the internet market, you will undoubtedly identify your niche , sit inside it with the support of digital marketing professionals, and collect the fruits of your labor.
Then ask yourself some questions that will be very useful for a series of preliminary considerations when opening your furniture ecommerce :
- Where do you want to sell your furniture and furnishing accessories?
- Who is your typical customer?
- What are your main competitors on the net?
- How well do you know the market on which you intend to position yourself?
- How much attention and how much time can you dedicate to selling your products online?
- What services can you provide to your users?
- Where do you intend to ship your products?
- How much budget are you willing to invest to create your online store so that it is performing and functional?
- How much budget are you willing to invest, over time, to keep your online store a tool for real income?
These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself before even writing a business plan for your eventual online business. Doing it in writing will help you to put an order to the many ideas that will certainly cross your mind and establish, right from the start, whether to turn your project into a real business.
Selling furniture online: don’t underestimate the power of web marketing
Web marketing is a science made up of a set of activities that see the web as a single stage and which, through the study of the market, aims to develop commercial relationships on the network : from customer assistance to the acquisition of leads. , from promotion to pure advertising, from distribution to sale.
As you can imagine, these are complex activities that are the result of competence and experience. Just as in your work as an entrepreneur in the interior design sector there is a know-how that only professionals can boast, in the same way in digital marketing there are unique skills that only an expert consultant or a specialized agency is able to offer you. . This premise is essential to help you understand that your online furniture sales business could be more successful with the support of a web professional.
The following are just a few key points that will allow you to start shaping your virtual store project.
The first thing you will need to consider is how much ecommerce penetration is present in the market in which you have decided to operate . Always remember that, if in a certain geographic area you can also offer your customers a physical location to support online sales, the more your virtual business moves away from your showroom, the more you will have to be able to persuade your users to buy. a product that they cannot touch with their hands.
The second strategic advice for opening a furniture ecommerce concerns the synergy of the many tools available to digital marketing : your online store will work better if it is intelligently supported by other promotion channels designed to generate sales on the web . Among these, for example, are the DEMs – considered by a large player in the sector such as the Natuzzi Group to be one of the most successful tools in e-commerce, because they are able to directly affect the target audience.
Not only that: your online store will also be helped to grow by all those organic positioning activities that take the name of SEO , and by brand reputation and brand awareness actions on social networks, so-called Social Media Strategy and Social Media Management .
Finally, SEM will allow you to optimize the presence of your furniture ecommerce on search engines such as Google also through non-organic, but paid actions. This type of activity will be particularly functional in the very first phase of your virtual store’s life , when Google has not yet had the opportunity or the time to position you naturally among the first results of its searches.
All the necessary geographical considerations will then have to be made : as you can well imagine, the performances on web marketing activities change considerably depending on the country. Each nation is able to generate leads in a different way and offer its own redemption, always based on the various tools that are used. Specifically, we can confidently argue that some strategies that prove to be optimal for Italy could be unsuccessful for England; some methods considered successful in Germany will not work in Japan. Therefore, even in this case, a careful study of the online markets is appropriateon which you intend to operate and the support of a professional who can enlighten you on the best strategies to implement according to the geolocation of your business .
These preliminary investigations are as important as and more than the practical opening of your online store , because they will allow you to optimize time, costs, actions , giving life to a strategy with a greater potential for success.
Finally, remember that a change in your entrepreneurial mentality will be of absolute and indispensable help in expanding your business to a world as important and as particular as that of the web.
Are you ready to create a business that is truly in step with the times?