In my previous blog post I touched on how great product imagery and photography can help your home furnishing products stand out and make the best impression possible when users can’t actually touch or feel products online. This can be accomplished using interactive product imagery and visualization platforms such as Adobe’s Dynamic Media Classic (formerly Scene7) and Artifi. These types of features are no longer just “nice-to-haves” in the home furnishings industry, but are what customers have come to expect.
Progressive marketers are taking the visualization process one step further by allowing customers to not only visualize products options, but to customize, visualize and submit orders (or quote requests) online. This is commonly referred to as CPQ (Configure, Price, and Quote) and a common theme in the B2B commerce arena, as it has traditionally helped dealers and sales people quickly and accurately produce sales quotes for the end user customer.
Configurators can include option-based pricing, customer-based pricing, purchase rules and include logic to present only the applicable product options for products, taking into account any dependencies that exist in the product selection process. Essentially, you are creating a step-by-step ordering system that allows customers to build a product on the fly with pricing, while also eliminating some factor of human error.
For the home furnishings industry, product configurators allow the retailers to showcase more product and in all variations, which usually is not possible with larger home furnishing items, as physical retail space is at a premium. Customers receive the benefit of viewing the product configured to their exact liking, which can provide additional comfort in the purchasing process. For many years consumers have had to rely on small samples or swatches which did help but didn’t always paint a complete picture of what the overall product will look like.
Well thought out product configurators that include visualization and order capture can provide:

• Custom configuration tracks for product types
• Product availability based on customer type
• Customer based pricing in the configuration process
• Product option dependencies (i.e. only show available options based on prior selection)
• Shipping rules based on overall product build
• Recommendations, inspiration and error messaging (providing suggestions at each step in the build process, i.e. ‘This really goes well with this selection’ or “Many customers have selected this option with your prior selection.”)

To see an example of a visual product configuration in action, see what we did for Loom Decor.

Did you ever wonder why agents and sellers stage homes? It’s because product image is paramount. Creating a vision and painting a picture for the buyer can make your product stand out from the competition.
Visuals matter more than ever, which is why it’s common practice to see virtual tours as part of a compelling product story. The fact is image and outstanding product presentation drive buying confidence. Some experts are now calling this ‘visual-driven commerce.’
The same principle applies – and may be even more important – when it comes to digital commerce in the home furnishings industry. The stakes are higher when purchasing home furnishings online because it’s a large investment. Some buyers may feel anxiety and apprehension because they are making purchase decisions without the ability to see, touch or feel the product in real life.
To instill buyer confidence, you can implement some of the following visual merchandising and best practices used by popular home furnishings websites. While not all of these  may sway a customer to ‘add to cart’, it will certainly help showcase your products in the best light, drive engagement, and give her peace of mind in the buying process – bringing her one step closer to purchase.

1. Stellar Product Photography

When it comes to product photography, this is not an area to cut corners. Use professional grade, high-resolution photos that provide the utmost clarity. Create a uniform display format across your product selection and include multiple product images and perspectives to give customers a detailed vision of what they are buying.

2. Interactive Product Imagery

Allow customers to interact with your product when possible. By using display tools that allow customers to zoom with extreme clarity and see product details like finishes, fabric textures, and colors, they gain additional confidence that a specific product will suits their needs.
Using technology such as Adobe’s Dynamic Media Classic (formerly Scene7), you can implement advanced features on your eCommerce website such as 360-degree rotation, panning, zooming, and even manipulate product customization by viewing different color swatches. This experience somewhat simulates the inspection of merchandise that customers go through in a retail store.

3. Inspiration Galleries & Look Books

Seeing the big picture and envisioning what furniture will look like in a home can often be difficult for customers when all they see are standalone product images. This is one of the reasons that inspiration galleries and online look books are increasingly popular.
Galleries that feature within a room can take customers on a visual tour of product collections that spark emotion and provide ideas of trends, styles, and how pieces may actually work within the customer’s home. Not every customer has a ‘vision’ or has interior design experience. The use of ‘romance imagery’ and showcasing multiple products in use within a collection helps convey how multiple pieces work together, which creates cross-selling opportunities and provides customers with inspiration or additional ideas for product usage.
Galleries and look books also provide a great opportunity to employ additional rich content and media elements to incorporate with product storytelling. eCommerce marketers can embed hot-spots that link to additional products information, content snippets (i.e. reviews, uses, applications, design-tips), calls-to-action (i.e. Buy Now, Request Quote) and rich-media such as video elements to generate additional interest and encourage customers to take action that ultimately leads to conversion.
Within the competitive eCommerce market of home furnishings, merchandisers recognize the importance of “upping their game.” Learn how one of our clients, Jordan’s Furniture, has significantly improved its online and offline shopping experience for customers by integrating its product catalog, website search, and eCommerce capabilities.
To keep up with the latest news, trends and insights on eCommerce in home furnishings, subscribe below to receive our weekly Commerce Digest.

“Who doesn’t have the Amazon app on your phone?” Adam Morris, CEO at Redstage Networks, posed the question to an audience during the Magento Imagine 2017 breakout session, Thriving in an Amazon World.
About 80 percent of attendees in the room raised their hands. Well…“this is your challenge.”
The intense competitive pressure that huge online companies like Amazon has placed on online retailers has forced eCommerce businesses to rethink their marketing strategies, product mix and the channel strategy in general.
Here are six elements to think about to help give yourself a competitive advantage:
1. Product Authority and Thought Leadership
Rich product content, articles and product education is not something Amazon does particularly well. Provide rich helpful content, product comparison, guides and media and help people become educated and choose the right products for them.
2. Licensing and Exclusivity
Create exclusive channel and reseller relationships. “Limit your competition by design…which can limit a race to the bottom.” This strategy can reduce the price wars and help you maintain better margins.
3. Subscriptions
“Recurring sales are the best sales.” Improve customer retention by design by implementing subscription strategies. However, be conscience about security and PCI, as storing credit-card information is not acceptable without the proper tokenization systems in place. Another pitfall can be custom over subscription. Provide tools to allow users to postpone or reduce subscription levels and/or ship frequency. Too much product in a customer’s hands at too high of a frequency can lead to cancellation and customer dissatisfaction.
4. Personalized Email Marketing
Email can represent 20% to 30% of traffic and produce 300% conversation rates. Gather great information on customers at various stages of the experience and segment your audience properly by demographic characteristics and product interests. Customer data can be conversion gold and allow retailers to provide very customized and personalized outbound messaging and promotions. Make sure you have good data! Misguided promotions that include the wrong products to the wrong audience can have an adverse effect by increasing opt-outs and decreasing conversions.
5.  Bespoke Products & Customizations
Amazon offers very limited customizable products. This provides an opportunity for eCommerce businesses. Create tools to allow customers to personalize products and possibly order in a different format than you might find on Amazon. Give yourself an advantage by differentiating yourself and the products offered in your storefront.
6. Niche Products & Selections
Focus on niche product segments where you can do better. Provide customers with a better shopping experience by possibly proving your knowledge of a product category. Implement filters and attributes that show customers you are an expert in the product segment. Implement advance shopping tools, product selection utilities and comparison guides that help users narrow their product selection quickly and accurately.