1 / 16

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

jon
Download Presentation

Business to Business: Online Furniture Industry

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  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

More Related