Monthly Issue
From Home Furnishing Business
EDITOR’S LETTER You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression
September 4,
2017 by Jane Chero in Advertising, Business Strategy, Industry 
With the soft economy for furniture, the drum beat continues as to the solution for lackluster sales. The most obvious indicator is the lack of traffic in to the store. It’s no question traffic into the store has been cut in half over the last decade, as consumers shop fewer and fewer stores.
It is accepted by all that 70-75% of all consumers visit the web before making the purchase with over half making the decision of who to shop on the web. Now is the time to accept the opportunity to impress the consumer is on your website.
The buzz in the market created by the social media vendors is to create traffic to your website. However, many retailers need to consider what the consumer will find when they get there. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Without a doubt, the challenges to keep product content current is there. Many vendors are attempting to solve this issue. Today, however, a simple smart phone picture uploaded is better than no image at all.
Your homepage is your front door. Are the product images new? Is the homepage cluttered by messages from all your vendors, as well as every department of your company?
While it is exciting to discuss virtual reality creating tools to allow consumers to visualize your furniture in their home, let’s get the basics done first.
The internet can be a great tool to communicate home furnishings to the consumer, but we must first make it work for us. Remember your first competitor is all of the other areas a consumers’ disposable income could go. As you can see, only 9.22% of consumer said furniture was the number 1: