The furniture industry was the winner of Black Friday 2020, with an increase of 6% in sales compared to the year before.1 Online furniture and homeware sales are expected to see an average yearly growth of 10% worldwide over the next few years as well.2 Due to the COVID-19 pandemic about 58% of the world’s population has been forced to switch to working from home, motivating people to invest in their homes and furniture.3
Black Friday can be a wonderful, but stressful time for online shops. Last year, we saw an increase in transactions of 35% compared to 2019.4 Online shopping in particular skyrocketed, with an increase of 97% in average daily sales compared to earlier in the month.5
To help you make the most of this time, here are some tricks and tips to create an outstanding checkout experience from a merchant who is doing it right.
Wants&Needs - A shopping experience with look and feel
The Dutch company Wants&Needs set out to offer their customers a unique online furniture store concept to replace long days of wandering around the shopping boulevards. Their webshop presents pieces from leading brands, curated with care, love, and an eye for detail. For those who want to see a product in real life first, they also opened a physical showroom in Gemert, the Netherlands.
“We sell furniture and living accessories, or as we call them ‘must-haves’ for living”, says Tessa Selten, founder of Want&Needs. “We want to be more than just a webshop. We want to be an environment in which customers get inspired to develop their own style. Our goal is to recreate the experience of a brick-and-mortar concept store online. With a clear and aesthetic use of colors and designs, we want customers to feel as if they’re walking through a real-life concept store in the middle of Stockholm or Milan."
The role of checkouts in customer journeys
Last Black Friday, our data revealed furniture as one of the most winning industries. As an example of online retail excellence, what does this mean for Wants&Needs? What’s important to them, and how do they see the role of the checkout in providing excellent shopping experiences?
Tessa explains: “Some companies might make the mistake of believing that their job is done once they get customers to hit the buy button. For us, the checkout is an essential part of the whole shopping journey. We created an appealing website with engaging contents, hand-picked items, and invested in marketing strategies - and we don’t want all this effort to end in an abandoned cart because customers deem the checkout too complicated or because their preferred payment method is not available.”
“MultiSafepay offers many different methods, and we know where they are most popular. There are not only regional differences, but also generational ones. Younger customer groups may choose different payment options than older generations, data shows they would rather choose for digital wallets or ‘buy now - pay later’ options. In fact, a fairly large percentage - about 40% - of our customers go for the option to pay after delivery. This makes it a very attractive option for merchants to include in their payment method mix for Black Friday. It’s a good way to attract first-time visitors and improves the customers purchasing power.”
Optimizing the checkout with MultiSafepay
Tessa continues: “For us, the high shopping season of the year starts with Woontober on October 1. This means our whole checkout system has to be ready to process an increased amount of orders during this time. And with more transactions, there’s also more administrative work. The Multisafepay platform is intuitive to use and works well for us. We can offer several different payment methods while having a clear overview of all transactions in one system. We can filter transactions, and get access to reports to leverage consumer insights.”
“We also have the option to add additional payment conversion features, such as Second Chance emails, which send notifications to customers if they haven’t completed a purchase. That’s a particularly useful feature for the upcoming holiday season, as there are a number of peak shopping days coming up - from Black Friday, over Cyber Monday, up to the Christmas season.”
“In a couple of weeks, we'll change our ecommerce platform from Magento 1 to Magento 2. This is a big step for us, and we're sure that this update will make our website even faster, clearer, and more conversion-friendly.”
What’s next?
We asked Tessa about Wants&Needs’ further plans to improve their customer journey. She shares: “We are currently busy working on a new website and creating different customer journeys through email marketing. We are working a lot on improving our advertisements, SEO, and social media channels. We're a young and trendy company, and social media offers us a perfect channel to communicate with our existing and potential customers. It's an extremely useful tool for developing brand awareness.”
“Also for us, sustainability plays an important role. Green consumerism is a trending topic, and for us, sustainable entrepreneurship is a choice we want to take seriously. We’re only working with brands that have all the necessary quality marks, and we’re taking steps like using recycled packaging, supporting green electricity, etc. In collaboration with Tree-nation, we’re planting a tree for every order over 50 EUR. We are also collaborating with the Ocean Cleanup Project to help remove plastic from the oceans.”
Get ready for Black Friday 2021
To follow Wants&Needs’ example and make the most of this year's holiday sales season, it is crucial to create memorable and enjoyable shopping experiences and optimize the customer journey through the checkout. Stay tuned for session #4 in our series on how to build the perfect checkout for Black Friday!
With more than 20 years’ experience in ecommerce and a variety of digital payment solutions and features, let MultiSafepay help you adapt to your customers' wants and needs and stay ahead of the market.
1 https://www.multisafepay.com/blog/black-friday-2020-results
2 https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/europe-home-furniture-market
3 https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/furniture-market
4 https://www.multisafepay.com/blog/black-friday-2020-results
5 https://www.criteo.com/blog/omnichannel-holiday-shopping/
