What a Furniture Store Website Needs

What the site is actually for

Nobody buys a sofa on impulse. People measure the living room, argue about colours, and spend several evenings looking at furniture on their phones before they drive anywhere.

By the time they walk into a showroom, most have a short list and a budget, and they have already ruled out the stores whose websites left them guessing.

The site's job is to make the visit worth the drive: to show what is actually there, what it costs, whether it will fit, and how it gets home.

The questions shoppers bring

• Is it on the floor now, or only in a catalogue?
• Will it fit the room, the doorway and the stairs?
• What does it cost, roughly, in the fabric I want?
• How long will it take in another fabric or finish?
• Do you deliver, carry it upstairs and put it together?
• How does the financing work, in plain terms?

The first is the one most furniture sites answer worst. A site built from suppliers' catalogues shows thousands of pieces the store has never stocked, and the shopper cannot tell what is there this weekend.

What is on the floor now

A furniture floor changes every few weeks as pieces sell and new ones arrive. The website should change with it.

Mark each piece clearly: on the floor and in stock, on the floor but made to order, or available to order and not on display. Somebody driving across town to try a recliner needs to know it is there.

A short page of new arrivals, updated weekly by whoever receives the deliveries, gives regulars a reason to look and the store something current to share.

When a floor model sells, take it off the site the same day. A shopper who comes for one piece and finds it gone starts the visit disappointed.

Dimensions people can use

Give width, depth and height in inches and centimetres, plus the measurements that decide fit: seat height and depth, the clearance under a bed frame, a dresser's depth with its drawers open.

Then the question nobody asks until delivery day: whether the piece comes apart, and the narrowest doorway or stairwell it can pass through. A sofa that will not turn into a hallway is a return before it is a sale.

Delivery and assembly

Delivery is part of the price of furniture, and a shopper comparing stores is comparing that too.

State the areas you deliver to, what each costs, and what is included: carrying it in, taking it upstairs, unpacking, assembly, and removing the packaging.

Say how delivery is booked and how much warning people get of the time. Somebody taking a morning off work wants a window, not a day.

If you take old furniture away, say so and say what it costs. It can settle a choice between two similar stores.

Custom orders and lead times

Many pieces can be ordered in another fabric, leather, finish or size, and the wait is where custom orders go wrong.

Give honest ranges in weeks for each kind of order, and say what can make them longer. A shopper told eight to twelve weeks who has it in ten is pleased; one told six who waits ten is not.

State the deposit, whether an order can be changed or cancelled once placed, and whether custom pieces can be returned. These are the terms people remember being told, or not told.

Photograph fabric samples in daylight, and say that colours vary between screens and the samples can be seen in the store.

Financing stated plainly

Many furniture stores offer financing, and a banner promising no payments for a year is a familiar sight.

State the terms beside it in plain words: how long the offer lasts, the interest rate after any promotional period, any fees, that approval is required, and what happens if the balance is not paid off in time.

Put the full terms on their own page, as text rather than a scanned document, linked from everywhere the offer appears.

A shopper who understands the offer before the visit can decide at the counter. One who discovers a condition afterwards remembers the store, not the lender.

Rooms, not cut-outs

Supplier images show each piece floating on white, the same photograph every other store uses. They show the shape and little else.

Shoppers want to know how big a piece looks beside a person, how the fabric takes the light, and what goes with it. Photographs of your own room settings answer all three.

Take them in good light, from where a person would stand, with something familiar for scale: a lamp, a side table, a rug.

Keep the catalogue image for the clean outline, but lead with the room.

A worked example

A family-owned furniture store on a highway strip outside a valley town had a site built around its suppliers' catalogues: several thousand products, each on a white background, none with a price.

Few had ever been on its floor, so Saturday shoppers arrived asking for sofas they had seen online and were told those could be ordered, in twelve weeks.

The financing banner on the home page kept its terms in a PDF few people opened, and some customers learned about the fee at the counter.

The rebuild put the floor first: a page of what was on display that week, photographed in the store's own room settings, with prices, dimensions and whether each piece was in stock.

The catalogues stayed, labelled as available to order with typical lead times. Delivery, assembly and financing each got a short page in plain text, linked from every product.

When people phone to ask what is in, staff now send them the link.

The counter-case

A store selling mostly from one manufacturer's catalogue, with a small floor, can lead with the catalogue if it says clearly what can be seen in person.

A maker of custom pieces, with no stock to show, needs a portfolio and a clear account of the process more than a floor page.

But every furniture site should show what is really there, with the measurements, delivery terms, lead times and financing a shopper needs before the drive.

What to build first

1. Mark what is on the floor this week.
2. Photograph your own room settings in daylight.
3. Add full dimensions and doorway clearance.
4. Write the delivery and assembly page.
5. Give lead times as honest ranges in weeks.
6. Put the financing terms in plain text.
7. State the returns policy for each kind of order.

Step one comes first because it changes who walks in. A shopper who knows a piece is on the floor arrives to sit on it, not to be told it can be ordered.

The same problem of a floor that changes every week comes up in what a consignment store website needs.

Frequently asked questions

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