FOS Furniture: Lessons Learned from a Bad Website
If your retail website doesn’t showcase what you sell, you won’t turn many visitors into buyers.
Of course, we know that FOS Furniture must sell furniture, because ‘furniture’ is in their name. But, when you arrive at their home page you have no idea what sort of furniture they sell.
Sadly, FOS is suffering in the SW Florida economy like many of their retail colleagues. The depressed real estate market has dampened sales from Naples up through Cape Coral. FOS is shuttering two stores in Bonita Springs and Fort Myers. Tough market aside, a much better website could have made a positive difference. Learn how to do it better.
Here’s why the site just doesn’t work:
- Although the website was new in 2006, it has an antique design that would have been just passable in1996.
- There is no homepage graphic that actually shows the products that they sell.
- The homepage shows 2 old 2004 and 2005 awards from a local newspaper that local residents know is really an advertising-related ‘everybody wins’ awards promotion. Even so, they don’t show any current ‘awards’.
- There are no internal pages that highlight nicely designed furniture groupings. Other than a reproduced ’store closing’ ad, there are no furniture images anywhere on the website.
- Their ’specials’ page is just a jpg version of their current newspaper advertisement.
- The contact us page just has a generic email address with a corporate phone number.
- We can’t learn anything about the company other than the fact that it has 4–soon to be 2–locations. We don’t know how long they’ve been in business. We don’t know if they are locally owned. We don’t know anything about the management team. We don’t know if they offer any design services. We don’t know if they feature low prices or high quality.
The marketing tragedy is that in 2006 when FOS Furniture rolled out their current website, an investment of several thousand dollars could have generated an attractive and effective site which made it easier for visitors to become buyers.
Here are some thoughts on how they could create a site that would move visitors closer to taking the key action–visit an FOS location.
- Look at what great competitors are doing. Adapt their best stuff.
- Showcase great looking furniture.
- Make it clear why I should visit FOS.
- Show what brands you carry.
- Offer customer testimonials.
- Show great customer rooms with FOS furniture installed.
- Tell your story so we know that we can trust you.
- Offer something special that’s unique for web visitors. That drives store traffic and provides a metric.
Content marketing isn’t about spending a lot of money. It’s about making it easy for your customers to buy from you. That may require a significant investment of thought, but it doesn’t necessarily require big investment in cash.
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Comments [3]
Further thoughts on how to make a better web site.
Content isn’t about what the marketer wants to say, it’s about what the customer wants to know. If the search term “furniture” is entered into a search engine, will the FOS page show up anywhere?
It didn’t with my Google search. But then again what serious furniture buyer would enter the search term furntiture? Wouldn’t they more likely enter a modified term, such as “apartment furniture” or “sofas” or “dining room tables” or “living room furniture” or bargain “furniture fort myers”? If they did, would they want to know about a Furniture Outlet Store generically? Or would they want to know about the specific subject for which they searched?
We know that web searchers are both very motivated (They are looking for answers and product/services to buy) and very impatient. (The essence of the web is speed and responsiveness.)
If you don’t provide content that they are looking for, and provide it promptly, even if they find your site, they will leave you for some other vendor.
This company seems to be stuck in the 1990s not only in web style but in marketing savvy. One hesitates to think what their furniture looks like. (Maybe that is why they don’t show it. )
Bill,
Thanks for your feedback. Although they sell inexpensive furniture, they do picture nice room groupings in their newspaper ads. It wouldn’t have been a big stretch to get decent images on their website.
Newt
Newt:
My point was not that their furniture was unattractive or of anything less than fine quality. I don’t know. It was that it doesn’t matter what their products are like with this web strategy. A web site has to focus on what the searcher is looking for. Even if by dumb luck someone stumbled onto their landing page (or entered it in a browser directly) they wouldn’t stick around to find out anything more about the company. It’s the web equivalent of a movie set facade. No meat on those bones. (Must be more metaphors out there I can use, too. But I won’t.)