Millennials compose the largest age group in the U.S., with 60% of them having purchased furniture online. As they approach their prime earning — and spending — years, their impact on furniture ecommerce will continue to grow.
Given that millennials play a significant role in shaping the future of the furniture retail industry, it’s crucial to keep up with the trends of this generation so you can meet their needs and design an effective marketing strategy.
Below, we’ll discuss the top furniture ecommerce preferences and trends of millennials to help you provide them with a seamless shopping experience.
4 Furniture Ecommerce Trends To Help You Drive More Millennials To Your Store
1. Omnichannel Shopping
The in-store experience remains a critical component for millennial shoppers, with many preferring to “try before they buy” to ensure the product is what they want. However, others solely rely on furniture ecommerce websites, and many adopt a combination of both. In fact, online shopping can offer significant advantages, including robust search and sort tools and the ability to list variations and configurations.
The ease of transitioning from online to in-store significantly influences a millennial's store preference. Although millennials often blend both shopping styles, they typically initiate their process with online research—reading product ratings, seeking the best value, and comparing prices. In fact, nearly 30% of millennials spend more online and less in-store.
Embracing omnichannel shopping strategies, complemented by unified online and brick-and-mortar messaging, not only meets but exceeds the expectations of millennials.
2. Personalization
Considered the first digital natives, millennials understand modern technology and the experiences it can produce. This is why millennials expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences.
With the right furniture ecommerce platform, furniture retailers can create a unique experience for each shopper using technology that enables personalization. Localization, customer segmentation, and session data used together mean that product recommendations can be highly specific to each individual shopper.
“You might also like” language helps guide millennial shoppers through a personalized shopping journey. These individualized product recommendations can result in customers spending more time on specific product pages.
3. Meeting Millennial Communication Preferences
For furniture retailers looking to tap into the purchasing power of millennials, understanding their communication preferences is vital to turning their propensity for shopping online into actual sales. Millennials, known for their tech-savvy nature, gravitate towards tools that facilitate communication on their terms, such as:
Text Messaging and Chat
Many millennials would rather not meet with salespeople face-to-face as a first step and instead often start their shopping journey online.
Furniture retailers should employ text and chat sales support, review in-store processes, and always provide live chat as an online communication option. AI-powered chatbots can offer the same personalized experience as a live chat support person.
Tried-and-true email communication is also embraced by this generation, with 79% of millennials in the US stating they like brands to contact them by email.
This type of communication is only effective if the email is opened and read, so you need to get it right. Best practices for email marketing should be followed, including direct subject lines that are short and catchy, concise or bulleted text, and visual content.
Social Media
Millennials are rarely without a smartphone, and they interact with brands on it frequently, often through social media threads.
Your brand needs to be as accessible on relevant social media apps, as 77% of furniture shoppers are influenced by social media content when making purchasing decisions. This presents a valuable opportunity to establish a strong online presence, build relationships with customers, and significantly impact their buying choices.
To capitalize on this trend, leverage social media not just as a platform for advertising but as a multifaceted tool. Engage and interact with consumers and potential customers by answering questions on your posts, collecting feedback and reviews, and more.
4. Flexible Payment Options
Compared to past generations, millennials sometimes have less disposable income and less credit.
To capture more of the millennial furniture-buying market, you should offer other types of furniture financing on your product pages and during the checkout process. According to a recent study, one in three millennials bought retail items on installment plans.
Buy now, pay later is favored by nearly 60% of consumers over credit cards, and has emerged as a valuable financing choice, particularly in segments like furniture.
Targeting this demographic with installment payment plans or lease-to-own financing can be a game-changer for your furniture business, offering a solution that resonates with their financial preferences and habits while also presenting a strategic approach to expanding your client base, increasing average order value, and fostering repeat business.
Leveraging Millennial-focused Technology
While understanding trends and shopping preferences is a great start, if your technology is not suited to meeting the demands of this generation, you could be missing out on reaching the biggest generation in the U.S.
To leverage the right technology to drive millennial traffic, you need the right furniture ecommerce platform that fully meets your marketing, merchandising, operational, and IT needs.
Discover how you can empower your teams with the right omnichannel ecommerce platform designed specifically for furniture retailers just like you. Read A Buyer’s Guide to Choosing the Right Furniture Ecommerce Software today.
