The Future of Furniture Ecommerce: A Webinar with Blueport and Applause

The world of ecommerce has evolved. The early days of ecommerce revolved mainly around shoppers using online as a price comparison tool. Today ecommerce is less and less about price and much more of a convenience play. With the rise of Amazon and other pure-plays, customers now have high expectations regarding how convenient it is to shop with your brand. Where once consumers would struggle to get through a shopping cart online, today they expect it to work seamlessly.

But the Amazon model doesn’t work for all categories. Furniture, for example, is a much more considered, omnichannel path to purchase compared to most retail categories. Additionally, complicated reverse logistics and the necessity of an in-store experience present huge barriers to furniture retailers going online.

Despite these challenges, online has become a necessity; the front door into a brand and presents a massive opportunity to categories like furniture that have yet to be replaced by the Amazon model. Mixing in-store advantages with a compelling online experience will enable traditional retailers to compete against pure-plays. With the right technology, traditional furniture retailers can match their in-store advantages with a modern, compelling ecommerce site to offer shoppers a seamless omnichannel path to purchase.

To keep up with customer expectations and provide a seamless omnichannel experience, most retailers are moving to cloud platforms for their lower costs, greater agility and the ability to innovate. For furniture retailers, the Blueport Platform provides the agility of a cloud solution tailored to furniture’s unique path to purchase.

With Applause’s testing capabilities, Blueport is able to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience despite the lengthy and complex path to a furniture purchase. With crowd-sourced testing, we can efficiently and effectively test new enhancements and features on our sites, keeping our release cycles on schedule and ensuring our sites provide the best furniture shopping experience possible.

To learn more about how Blueport creates seamless omnichannel experiences with the help from Applause, listen to the webinar recording featuring Andy Wolf, Blueport’s Chief Product Officer.