6 Ways To Convert More Furniture Shoppers

In the ever-evolving and demanding landscape of furniture retail, the best way to stand out is by developing innovative approaches that resonate with the customers. 

Customers’ expectations are continuously growing, and they are always on the lookout for a tailored experience, for which you need to incorporate the latest technologies like 3D product visualization and AR in your furniture presentation and marketing strategies. 3D product visualization and AR enhance visual appeal and provide a lifelike preview of products. This further creates a seamless and engaging shopping experience,

Explore this blog on six ways to convert visitors into customers by utilizing these innovative technologies and discover their transformative power in converting furniture shoppers.

Furniture Industry Challenges in Converting Visitors to Customers

The furniture industry is booming, especially eCommerce, which has revolutionized how consumers furnish their homes, offering convenience and a wide selection of options. Although online shopping offers advantages over traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, they have challenges. Let’s talk about them in brief.

Issues That Hamper Conversion In Conventional Furniture Stores

There are several challenges associated with traditional brick-and-mortar furniture stores that can hinder converting visitors into customers.

• In-store shopping often results in customers needing help to visualize how furniture will look in their homes, leading to delayed or abandoned purchases.
• A personal shopping experience is increasingly crucial to meeting customer expectations and increasing conversion rates. Conventional stores may be able to cater to the individual needs of their customers.
• There may be challenges in collecting and leveraging customer data for personalized marketing efforts in traditional stores. Limited data may hinder targeted advertising and promotions.

Cost-Related Impact

• When customers cannot visualize whether or not the furniture will suit their home or office, it results in ill-informed decision-making. This can further lead to returns, thus impacting revenue.
• The inability to personalize customer experience can reduce customer satisfaction, thus ultimately impacting conversion rates.
• The difficulty of collecting customer data can affect the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, making it challenging to target specific segments of the customer base.

Conversion Challenges For Online Furniture Stores

Similarly, there are many roadblocks for online furniture stores in their pursuit of converting visitors to customers, such as

• Online shoppers do not have the option of touching, feeling, or assessing furniture items physically before purchase, which leaves them uncertain about the actual quality of the product.
• There is nothing like the tactile experience of shopping in a physical store. Online shoppers miss out on tactile interactions, such as sitting on a sofa or trying out a chair, which can influence their decisions.
• Customers may struggle to visualize how furniture fits into their space accurately, resulting in possible size disappointment upon delivery.

Cost-Related Impact

• Customers experiencing color discrepancies, damaged products, or dissatisfaction with products may return and exchange, resulting in additional shipping, restocking, and handling costs for retailers.
• Unlike physical stores, where customers can inspect and reject items at purchase, online retailers may have to incur additional costs associated with replacing or refunding damaged merchandise during transit.
  
  Understanding this predicament and its cost-related impact, we bring you some strategies powered by the latest technologies that you can implement to increase the probability of conversion in your store and cut down on preventable losses.

Let’s begin!

Ways To Convert Visitors Into Customers

The power of cutting-edge technology must be harnessed to convert more shoppers into satisfied customers. Augmented Reality (AR), 3D product visualization, technology, and furniture retail combine to enable immersive experiences. Integrating these technological advancements seamlessly enhances the online shopping experience and establishes a deeper connection between the retailer and the customer.

Leverage 3D Product Visualization To Engage Customers

The 3D product visualization process can revolutionize the online furniture shopping landscape by addressing common challenges and improving the customer experience significantly. In a competitive market, online furniture stores can gain customers and build trust and loyalty by leveraging this technology. Here are different ways in which it can help convert more customers.

• Realistic Preview: Unlike traditional 2D images, 3D product visualization gives customers a more accurate representation of furniture items by allowing shoppers to explore the items from different angles. Customers are more likely to be satisfied after delivery with realistic previews, reducing the likelihood of dissatisfaction.
• Better Visualization of Size and Scale: In online furniture shopping, it can be challenging to determine the size and scale of items. 3D visualization allows customers to visualize how pieces will fit in their homes and can make more confident choices with 3D visualization.
• Customization options: Online furniture retailers offer customers the option of customizing their products. With 3D visualization, customers can see their customized products in real time, such as fabric colors, finishes, or design options. Personalization can increase purchase chances and create a stronger connection with the product.
• Minimized returns: 3D visualization reduces the number of returns caused by customers receiving items that don’t match their expectations because it provides a more accurate representation of the product. In addition to saving on return shipping costs, this contributes to a more positive customer experience.
• Increased engagement: The interactive nature of 3D product visualization engages customers more effectively than static images. Shoppers can rotate, zoom, and interact with the product, creating a more immersive and enjoyable shopping experience. Increased engagement can result in more time spent on the website and conversions.
• Boost buying confidence: A 3D representation of a product gives customers confidence because they can examine it closely and interact with it. A clear understanding of what shoppers are buying increases their probability of making a confident purchase, resulting in a higher conversion rate.
• Adaptability to emerging technologies: 3D visualization can seamlessly integrate with emerging technologies, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), allowing for even more immersive and interactive shopping experiences.

House of Blue Beans offers comprehensive 3D product visualization solutions from scratch. This means we have you covered from product modeling to lifelike representation, be it images or video. Allow us to break down our services for you. 

3D product modeling: For House of Blue Beans, 3D product models are crucial to creating lifelike images and videos that showcase the products effectively. Using these models for furniture, product designers can visualize and fine-tune their designs well before physical production. With us, you can be sure that your images and videos will be impeccably accurate, including precise dimensions, shapes, and other essential details.

A key feature of our 3D product models is their reusability, so you don’t have to start over with each product variation. Because of this efficiency, you can seamlessly build upon existing models, saving time and resources while maintaining quality and accuracy, even if your product changes multiple times.

The first step in our process is meticulously creating 3D assets tailored to your needs. Depending on your preference, it could be an image or video; we make high-fidelity or low-fidelity assets.

• High-fidelity asset: High-resolution textures and high polygon count make these 3D models ideal for creating top-notch visual content, including bold images and intriguing videos.
• Low-fidelity asset: Low-fidelity assets feature lightweight meshes with optimized textures strategically designed to deliver seamless, immersive AR/VR experiences. They ensure optimal performance while maintaining the essential elements for virtual interactions.

Once we have created the 3D models and added texture, we create various product visualizations, such as

Images: From lifestyle to white background to 360-degree shots, we will help you create different images to convey your brand message best.

• Lifestyle images: Create a visual connection between your furniture and diverse lifestyles. These photos go beyond selling products; they capture an aspirational lifestyle, helping your customers visualize the furniture in their homes.

• 360-degree images: Keeping them engaged in their purchase decisions and putting your online store at the top of the digital marketplace requires letting them interact and explore products as if they were in a physical store. Let your customers see your furniture from all angles in a dynamic and immersive way.

• White background images: Against a blank canvas, we will make your furniture stand out, highlighting every detail and showcasing its design, craftsmanship, and sophistication

Videos: Take your concepts to the next level by transforming them into captivating visual narratives with our expertise. Our goal is to assist you in creating various videos, ranging from how-to guides to functional demonstrations, inspirational content, product showcases, and clean white background videos.

• White background videos: Our white background videos are the perfect canvas to highlight your furniture’s sleek design, intricate details, and craftsmanship – turning your product catalog into a visual symphony. 
• Functionality videos: Display your products’ practicalities, smart features, and versatility. Our videos help customers understand how your furniture seamlessly integrates into the modern lifestyle, whether an unfolding sofa bed or modular configurations.
• Product videos: Rather than simply showcasing your furniture, we tell stories through product videos. We highlight the qualities, materials, and design inspirations behind each one. Immerse your customers into a visual journey that goes beyond the surface.
• How-to videos: Assist customers with step-by-step instructions on assembling and maintaining furniture. Ensure that your customers feel confident and supported long after they purchase your furniture.
• Inspirational videos: We use cinematic storytelling to evoke emotions, inspiring potential customers to envision your furniture as an integral part of their dream living spaces.

Visual Content for Social Media: Our team specializes in creating visually appealing graphics, vibrant images, and compelling videos that tell your brand’s unique story across various social media platforms. Our visual storytellers are dedicated to creating scroll-stopping posts, shareable infographics, and immersive video content for your brand.

Architectural Renderings: Our expert architectural rendering service will help transform your architectural visions into captivating, photo-realistic images and animations that leave a lasting impression. Look at the stunning visual brilliance of this rendering video meticulously created with cutting-edge CGI technology for our esteemed client—experience how our rendering expertise is seamlessly combined with creativity and precision.

Incorporate Augmented Reality To Enhance Engagement

Integrating AR technology can revolutionize how customers interact with furniture retailers’ products, resulting in higher conversion rates and happier customers. Let us look at how AR technology can help enhance engagement and strengthen the possibility of converting visitors into customers.

• Virtual Placement: Using smartphones or devices, customers can virtually place furniture items in their living spaces. By providing this feature, buyers can see how the furniture will look and fit in their homes, reducing the uncertainty associated with online purchases and increasing the chances of a sale.
• Customized shopping experience: In AR, customers can visualize how different furniture pieces match their existing decor, enabling a personalized shopping journey. A deeper connection between customers and products can be fostered by offering customization options and real-time visualization.
• Virtual try-on: By enabling customers to virtually “try before they buy,” AR reduces the risk of dissatisfaction upon delivery, resulting in reduced returns.
• Enhanced engagement: The interactive nature of AR applications keeps users engaged for longer periods. Customers enjoy exploring various furniture options within their own homes, leading to increased engagement on the retailer’s platform.
• Confident purchasing decisions: By allowing customers to visualize products in their homes, VR can help them make confident buying decisions, leading to higher conversion rates.

Aside from lifelike 3D product visualization, House of Blue Beans offers AR experiences. Our AR service will help you unlock storytelling and interaction. We excel at creating customized virtual encounters beyond conventional limits, captivating users within mesmerizing digital realms. 

Our service aims to transport users into immersive and unforgettable dimensions by enhancing the brand encounters, designing state-of-the-art training simulations, or enriching educational materials. Discover the boundless potential of augmented and virtual reality, where each interaction seamlessly merges innovation with imagination for an unparalleled experience.

We offer three AR-powered services

• 360 shoppable rooms: House of Blue Beans’ 360 Shoppable Rooms revolutionize how customers shop and interact with furniture. With this cutting-edge augmented reality product, users can experience a fully immersive, three-dimensional room where they can explore and visualize furniture in a realistic environment by virtually stepping into it. Using AR technology, customers can rotate, zoom, and interact with furniture pieces to better understand how each piece fits within the context of a larger space.
• Visualizer applications: The Visualizer application brings the showroom experience directly to the users’ fingertips using augmented reality. The AR application lets customers superimpose virtual furniture using smartphones or tablets in real-world spaces. This service allows users to see how a piece of furniture will look and fit in their home, transcending traditional online shopping. Customers can experiment with different styles, colors, and configurations, fostering a deeper connection to the products.
• Custom experiences: Through our proficiency in 3D modeling, computer graphics, and augmented reality, we create immersive visual settings that seamlessly integrate your furniture into your target buyers’ homes and bathrooms. Nowadays, buyers do not have to rely on their imaginations to see how furniture or bathroom fitting will look in their homes.

Using our expertise, we bring the furniture to life on smartphones and tablets, giving them a realistic, interactive preview that transcends traditional online shopping. We are dedicated to eliminating uncertainty and offering buyers a tangible visual representation that fosters confidence and excitement during the buying process.

Use Artificial Intelligence To Boost Sales

Online furniture stores can enhance their customer experience by strategically integrating AI technologies, ultimately making it easier to convert visitors into customers.

• Chatbots: Incorporating AI-powered chatbots into the website allows real-time customer interaction. Providing instant assistance enhances the overall customer experience and can improve conversion rates by answering queries, providing product information, and guiding customers through purchasing.
• Voice search: With AI-powered visual search, customers can upload images or use pictures as search queries to find products. By streamlining the search process, this feature makes it easier for customers to find similar items. In addition to enhancing user engagement, visual search can lead to quicker decisions.
• Analytics to enhance user engagement: With artificial intelligence, you can track mouse movements, clicks, and how much time you spend on each website page. By analyzing this data, you can optimize the user interface, improve navigation, and create a more seamless and engaging shopping experience, thereby increasing conversions.

Enhance Shopper Appeal With Lifestyle Images

Lifestyle images aren’t just about showcasing products; they express emotions, tell stories, and inspire people. When an online furniture store can connect with its target audience through relatable and visually striking depictions, the online shopping experience is enhanced, and conversions are more likely to occur. 

Incorporating furniture lifestyle images can help your business boost the conversion rate in the following ways:

• Offers context: In lifestyle images, furniture items are shown in a realistic setting and can be visualized in a homeowner’s living space so the customer can make a more informed purchase decision.
• Creates aspirational appeal: In lifestyle images, furniture is displayed in well-designed settings to create aspirational appeal. Customers buy furniture, but they also buy a lifestyle. This emotional connection can motivate customers to want to own the featured furniture.
• Highlight use case: These lifestyle images illustrate the versatility and practicality of furniture pieces. Customers can better visualize the furniture in their homes by seeing images of cozy reading nooks, stylish dining setups, or functional home offices, demonstrating how the furniture can meet their specific needs.
• Builds brand identity: By using lifestyle images consistently, you can create a distinctive brand identity, conveying your brand’s style, values, and aesthetics so customers can better align with your product offerings.

With House of Blue Beans by your side, you can rest assured that your furniture will be put in the best spotlight. Unlike conventional product photography, our lifestyle photography captures your furniture in real-life scenarios that evoke emotions and ignite your audience’s imagination.

We follow the following process to create lifestyle images that resonate with your customers and convince them to purchase.

We create either standard or customized templates depending on your requirements and budget.

Standard template: Choose from our wide range of ready-to-use templates tailored to fit your brand. Let us design your visual content. After receiving your reference image, our team quickly translates it into an expertly designed 3D model. After completing the model, we render the image, ensuring a seamless and visually striking representation.

Benefits of Standard Template

• With minimal modifications and associated costs, our standard templates streamline the process by only requiring the placement of the product image.
• The availability of design elements allows the speedy creation of diverse visual content for your products, such as images or videos. This expedited process makes it easy to adapt to changing marketing demands.
• By taking advantage of our standard templates, you can quickly create samples and repetitive visual content for your products. This rapid turnaround will help you collect feedback and gain valuable insight into your brand’s most influential design choices.

Customized Template: Make your furniture visual content stand out with our tailored templates and showcase your unique brand identity. Using our extensive library of templates, you can create unique and brand-aligned product visual content from the ground up.

The process of creating lifestyle images using customized templates is as follows.

• The creative process begins when we receive your brand guidelines and reference image. We then create an inspiring mood board that reflects the value your brand provides to the market.
• Upon receiving your approval, we will create a layout you can customize further. Once your specifications have been approved, we seamlessly tailor the template and render the image, delivering the final, captivating visual content that perfectly aligns with your brand vision.

Benefits of Customized Templates

• As opposed to traditional methods, which can take a long time, customized templates revolutionize lifestyle imagery. By reducing time-to-market significantly, the software allows you to incorporate changes on the fly, giving your brand a competitive advantage.
• Our customized templates allow you to incorporate unique design elements into your product visuals.
• We ensure uniformity by adhering to your brand guidelines across multiple marketing channels. Our rigorous quality control protocols ensure the product image or video is consistent with your brand’s aesthetic, messaging, and design principles.

Gather First-Party Data

Furniture stores can harness first-party data to enhance their understanding of their customers and create a more personalized, engaging, and efficient shopping experience, ultimately boosting conversion rates and nurturing long-term customer relationships. Helping you understand customers’ preferences can encourage you to offer personalized product recommendations and enforce improved marketing strategies.

Moreover, the interactive way of collecting first-party data, for example, through quizzes and loyalty programs, adds to the customer experience. Interactive content encourages customers to spend more time on the website or in-store. As a result of enhanced engagement, conversion rates are often higher.

Enhance Mobile Experience

An online furniture store can increase sales and customer satisfaction by prioritizing and optimizing the mobile experience to catch the attention of a growing mobile audience. It significantly contributes to boosting conversion in the following ways.

• A responsive design maximizes your website’s user experience and facilitates a smoother conversion process. Ensure that your website is designed for mobile devices.
• Invest in reliable hosting to ensure your mobile site is fast and responsive. A responsive and swift mobile site reduces bounce rates and keeps users engaged, which increases conversion rates.
• Enhance mobile navigation by using an intuitive menu structure, simplify the browsing process for customers, and boost conversion rates with a user-friendly interface.
• Condensed yet informative content helps mobile users make quick decisions. Optimize the checkout process to be mobile-friendly, minimizing steps and input fields. Mobile users appreciate condensed but informative content.
• Make the mobile experience more interactive by integrating mobile-specific elements such as swiping galleries, touch-friendly sliders, and mobile-friendly filters.
• Improve mobile search experience for customers through predictive search suggestions, auto-complete features, and filters. This will reduce frustration and increase conversions.
• As voice-activated devices become more popular, make your website voice search-friendly. This will accommodate changing search behaviors and keep your products visible to users who prefer to use voice commands with their mobile devices.
• Push notifications notify mobile users about promotions, discounts, and new arrivals. Successful use of push notifications can bring back abandoned carts and increase conversions.

In addition to overcoming the challenges faced by traditional and online furniture stores, these strategies provide industry players with a roadmap for harnessing the immersive experiences enabled by AR and AI-driven solutions. The integration of these technologies addresses customer concerns, fosters confidence, and ultimately drives conversions as the furniture industry undergoes a revolution.

Let House of Blue Beans help you effectively embrace these technological advancements to your advantage and revolutionize how your customers envision and experience the world of eCommerce furniture.Contact us to know how we can help you convert more and better.