Daily News Archive
Brought to you by Home Furnishings Business
Hayneedle
October 10,
2012 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2012
Online home furnishings retailer Hayneedle.com concentrates on removing consumers perceived barriers to buying products via the Internet.
Donna Faust, director of brand management and media relations at Hayneedle, said the company uses real-life experience for continuous improvement of the sites user-friendliness.
When you look at how we developed the site, we have an in-house usability testing center, she said. We show people the new iterations of our shopping experience, see where they click and what they look for so we can learn from their behaviors and how they navigate the site.
That allows Hayneedle to tweak its presentationFaust offered a brick-and-mortar store analogy: If you walk in my showroom, and I see you spark to certain chairs, I change my pitch.
An eye for motivated talent in the recruiting process, in-house service on best-selling items, and consumer-friendly policies also grease the wheels for online purchasing.
We opened our Omaha customer service center in Summer 2010, and all our customer service is in-house, Faust said. Customer service isnt measured by time on the phone, but by closing of sales. That means were giving the customer the best experience by finding the right thing for them.
Weve done research on different categories as to why people by something online or not. We work on processes to reduce that friction, that resistance to making a purchase online. If youre not selling online, you might lose that opportunity to make that sale, because customers can find it online. You have to understand the friction point and work to remove it.
An investment in in-house product training also helps make shoppers more comfortable about buying big-ticket items such as sofas online.
We do significant in-house product training in our customer service center, Faust noted. Last year, we sent them to learn about high-end outdoor furniture. We have product training specific to questions that customer care rep has experienced with that product.
Hayneedle also promises free shipping on nearly everything, even 3,500-pound bathtubs; easy, hassle-free returns with no re-stocking fees; personal shopping assistance to help customers find their style; and 3 percent back in Haybuck Rewards on every purchase.
Reducing friction points in online purchasing is only a set-up for what Hayneedle has to offer shoppersbreadth and depth of product selection. The company sees itself as the place to find everything homefrom club chairs to rain barrels and coffee makers to cuckoo clocks, with complete selections for every room, style and budget,
In a retail store, youll see three, at most six colors of a patio umbrella, Faust said. You cant provide in the store the selection you can online. We pride ourselves on our selection. We have more than 1,500 vendor partners for drop-ship. We inventory our top sellers and product exclusives, also based on customer feedback.
Hayneedle recently added 500,000 new products, and continues to add new product categories and SKUs.
The recent consumer-sourced site improvements Faust mentioned, designed to empower shoppers to more easily develop complete room solutions and facilitate their purchase process, have immediately garnered strong responsecustomer satisfaction metrics have increased up to 300 basis points, and conversion is up 15 percent.
Those upgrades include improved category navigation and enhanced search capabilities that generate a more honed merchandise selection; enhanced product pages that better illustrate item details, including more images and larger swatches to help shoppers more accurately assess and match colors; a shipping calculator that estimates an orders date of delivery based on location ZIP code; crowd-sourced customer service reviews that highlight item pros, cons and suggested uses; social shopping functionalities that share trending items and what others are buying; and social media connections with like, share, Google+1 and Pinterest buttons.