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Business to Business: Online Furniture Industry

Business to Business: Online Furniture Industry. By: Adam Ratana In-Soo Son Omotola Talabi Rubina Zaidi. Major Players. Ccfurn.com Full-service office furnishing firm Provides wide selection of office furnishings Space planning, interior design, and installing services Gunderchurch.com

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Business to Business: Online Furniture Industry

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  1. Business to Business:Online Furniture Industry By: Adam Ratana In-Soo Son Omotola Talabi Rubina Zaidi

  2. Major Players • Ccfurn.com • Full-service office furnishing firm • Provides wide selection of office furnishings • Space planning, interior design, and installing services • Gunderchurch.com • Specializes in church furniture • Customizes its products • Markets in mid-west area • Officefurniture.com • Supplies office furniture • Step-by-step project management advice • Allows you to buy directly from their site

  3. Major Players • Office-design.com • Provides self-planning user interface • select or create a design • enter the room shape and measurement • layout space with products from online catalogs • view 3D rendering and product review • Helps customer locate the product dealer nearest them • Mks.net • Portal site for furniture industry • Categorizes furniture into specific segments and provides industry specialized Webs • Each web contains the links of manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers

  4. Common features of the sites • Sites offer only product information or catalogs – no selling through sites (except for one)! • To get further information, must follow up through contact • Company profiles and mission statement • Online catalog and products list • Self-design software (office-design.com, mks.net) • Online ordering form • Contact information • List of manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers

  5. Online gallery of office-design.com

  6. Screen shop of self-planning software

  7. Basic concepts • Informative • Provide real time detailed product information and descriptions for customers. • Price and feature based comparisons • Interactive • Online interactive design and office layout software • Dynamic customizable pages • Transactional • Online purchasing • Order tracking

  8. Online B2B Furniture Customers • Customer profiles determined by the core focus & business strategy of the site. • Emphasis usually on customer acquisition rather than retention – because furniture is often a one-time expense

  9. Online B2B Furniture Customers

  10. Value Added V A L U E

  11. How these sites attract customers • Many of these sites operate by “pull” systems • Customers are usually actively searching for furniture • Customers find these sites by doing an online search for furniture options; thus they visit sites that match their search query • Other methods of attraction • Being listed on trade site, e.g., www.mks.net • Word of mouth • Leasing/purchasing plans • Free shipping • Discounted prices

  12. How these sites retain customers Offer increased functionality: • Step-by-step project management help/advice • Free space planner / tips for preparing a scale drawing • Wide product selection • Leasing advice / info • Online lease application / lease payment calculator • On-site assembly option • Online order tracking system • Mailing lists to inform customers of sales, specials, closeouts, and new product additions • Functionality to save designs and reload them at a later time to continue work on them

  13. Low Points of Some Sites • Typically most of these sites are poorly done and do not offer much value over a paper catalog • Confusing Navigation/poor interface design (mks.net, ccfurn.com) • Not enough information or pictures (gunderchurch.com) • Bad use of frames (officefurniture.com) • “Sterile” feel – not much personality in the website (most of the sites)

  14. High points of some of the Sites • Excellent use of images and pictures (office-design.com, officefurniture.com) • Able to order online – “the complete experience” (officefurniture.com) • Clean, simple design (gunderchurch.com) • “Friendly” feel (officedesign.com)

  15. Recommendations • Sites should extend more of their owners presence onto the net, offer to form relationships with potential businesses buying from them • In general most of the sites are static sites, or use limited database capabilities. They should offer more value over a catalog: • Allow businesses to use a “wizard” to generate a list of furniture they might want • Allow ordering/payment online

  16. Recommendations • For the sites that do use ASP or other dynamic database technologies, there is no excuse to not have more functionality! Sites should: • Allow businesses to check on the status of their order (whether it was placed online or not) • Allow businesses to place orders online • Enable customizable solutions with pricing and/or estimates • Officefurniture.com’s site is very close to ideal; other sites should model themselves based on Officefurniture.com’s website

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