eCommerce is currently developing into a fresh and promising sales channel for furniture companies in addition to the traditional sales channel. Businesses must work hard to sustain and achieve breakthrough growth through eCommerce platforms, though.

As a result, numerous furniture companies started developing online furniture business websites and found surprising success, such Sieu Thi Noi That va Trang Tri Baya, Nha Xinh, Cozy, or Noi Phat Hoa Phat.

These websites’ success can be attributed to their early selection of an adequate and suitable eCommerce platform. Which platforms are appropriate for the furniture industry, then?

Main aspects of the eCommerce furniture industry

UI/UX standard furniture eCommerce website interface

​​The first criterion businesses set when developing an eCommerce website is a standard UI / UX interface, friendly to users who enjoy shopping for furniture online and other home goods to increase customer interaction.

Similar to eCommerce websites in other sectors like fashion, electronics, etc., websites in the furniture sector must feature stunning and high-quality photographs and videos.

This makes it simpler for companies to communicate product information to customers, especially with banner advertisements that have an easy-to-use interface and a pleasing style that will pique shoppers’ interests.

Businesses also need to consider other concerns including call-to-action button placement, cross-device compatibility, and layout designs that display a range of product designs from the navigation bar to page-by-page details.

Comprehensive functional system

Furniture firms need a functional system from basic to advanced to fully meet consumers’ buying expectations and maximize the user experience. This system should include:

• Catalog Management: Manage properties, pricing systems, inventory, photos, and videos to keep them running
• Content Management: Content development for CMS pages, image hosting, theme customization, and website design
• Customer Management: Control information, behavior, and consumption habits to build strategies for each specific customer group
• Sales Management: Set up and operate sales, order, payment, and shipping processes
• Marketing Management: Implement and optimize programs to attract potential customers with built-in support tools
• System Management: Seamless supply chain response with shipping navigation and automation management tools
• Store Management: Navigate and maintain your eCommerce business from online to offline
• Cart & Checkout: Manage shopping carts and process the next payment steps for customers
• Analytics and Reports: Monitor and measure eCommerce performance to give detailed reports to improve business efficiency

Businesses also need to develop some additional specialized features to address the furniture industry’s “own challenge,” such as:

• Omnichannel to track customer footprints across all channels from eCommerce platforms, and social networks, to eCommerce websites and mobile apps to deliver a seamless shopping experience.
• VR/AR or 360-degree view brings a visual experience and realistic visualization of the product, thereby enhancing the online furniture shopping experience.
• Customers who request customized products can specify the colors, materials, and sizes they want and pay a deposit. The supplier will then continue to produce the furniture items in accordance with the requirements and deliver them to the customer once they are finished. The consumer will then pay the supplier the balance at that time.

Integration with a variety of third-party services

Furniture businesses frequently integrate a range of payment options, shipping services, management software, and business analysis tools to optimize eCommerce business systems in order to provide customers with a comprehensive shopping experience.

Some popular payment methods businesses can integrate on the website to diversify payment methods to help customers have many choices such as card payment; eWallet; payment gateways.

Businesses might take into consideration software like ERP (SAP, Salesforce, Oracle), among others, when integrating back-office administration and operation software.

Finally, incorporating BI tools like Tableau, Looker, etc. will aid in the long-term analysis of business plans.

Scalability of the website

Businesses that are just starting to use eCommerce won’t concentrate on the website’s scalability in the future because platforms that provide this feature are sometimes hard to find. But tactically, spending money on a platform that facilitates this function will provide organizations an advantage over rivals in the market.

These aid furniture companies in making necessary adjustments, creating new features, and expanding their online systems to support several stores, languages, and currencies in the future.

Top 5 eCommerce platforms for furniture website development

Haravan

Haravan was founded in 2014 and is a very popular and popular eCommerce deployment platform in the Vietnam market with a variety of solutions for businesses and individual sellers.

Pros:

• Available and diverse themes for the furniture industry
• Wide range of applications, from basic to advanced to start an eCommerce business
• Reasonable eCommerce deployment cost, various packages from 200,000 VND/month to 3,000,000 VND/month, making it easy for customers to choose.
• ​​Time to build an eCommerce website is fast, only about 30 minutes for businesses to own a website with all the necessary features to get started. However, for the website to work effectively, businesses need to spend more time researching and developing the system.

Cons:

• The layout of existing templates causes duplicating, and it’s challenging to alter themes or create your own interface because doing so will have an adverse effect on the entire system.
• The system of specific functions for the furniture sector is still limited.
• Only integrated with services/utilities located in Haravan’s ecosystem.
• Because it is a SaaS platform, it will be difficult for Haravan to expand the website in the future.

=> Rating: 2/4

Haravan is suitable for start-up furniture businesses or SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) with operations mainly in Vietnam.

Shopify

Shopify is a popular SaaS platform in the world that provides a variety of solutions for businesses of all sizes to successfully build eCommerce websites.

Pros:

• Available and diverse themes for the furniture industry.
• Wide range of applications, from basic to advanced to start an eCommerce business.
• The initial cost is quite reasonable with a variety of options for businesses from $29/month to about $2,000/month.
• The time to build an eCommerce website is quite fast from 1-7 days, or more depending on the complexity of the system.
• Shopify has a large developer community to serve businesses.

Cons:

• The layout of existing templates causes duplicating, and it’s challenging to alter themes or create your own interface because doing so will have an adverse effect on the entire system.
• The system of specific functions for the furniture sector is still limited.
• A wider range of 3rd party services than Haravan but still only integrated with services available in Shopify’s app store.
• Deployment costs are both advantages and disadvantages of Shopify when the initial cost is quite reasonable, but in the long run, businesses have to pay the cost of using the platform, interface, application, etc., regularly every month. This makes it difficult to manage cash flow
• Because it is a SaaS platform, it will be difficult for Shopify to expand its website in the future.

=> Rating: 2/4

Shopify is considered suitable for start-ups or SMEs with global operations.

ZielCommerce 

ZielCommerce is an eCommerce platform with ready-made solutions specialized for the furniture industry.

Pros:

• Many themes are specific to the furniture industry, allowing businesses to customize according to their needs, helping to reflect the characteristics of the industry and position the brand image.
• Detailed internal eCommerce website construction challenges can be solved with the help of a comprehensive system of functions that combines the fundamental, sophisticated, and niche aspects of both customer and business needs, such as the best order processing system.

Cons:

• The ability to integrate with 3rd party services is still limited. This platform only supports add-ons available in its ecosystem, so businesses will not be able to link with the ERP, POS, CRM, BI, etc. Therefore, when using Ziel Commerce, businesses need to transfer all existing data to the platform’s servers.
• Although highly appreciated for the ability to expand the website system, this is still the disadvantage of Ziel Commerce in the long run. Accordingly, this platform will not support businesses to expand or develop new features because businesses cannot own the source code, so when affected, it will destabilize the entire website system.
• Ziel Commerce is not yet popular in the Vietnam market, so there is no Vietnamese version yet.
• Deployment time will depend on the complexity of the system, the average time is from 3-6 months.
• High implementation cost of about $50,000 per project.

=> Rating: 3/4

ZielCommerce will be the optimal choice for B2B, and B2C furniture businesses to deploy eCommerce websites or build mobile apps. However, this platform is not really popular in the Vietnamese market but is especially favored by foreign furniture retailers such as Frampo, Zeyka, etc.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that allows businesses to transform a regular WordPress website into a professional eCommerce website with full features and easy customization with just a few simple steps.

Pros:

• There are many free and premium themes from the WordPress and WooCommerce communities for the furniture sector which are easy to customize or businesses can use self-designed themes. 
• Functional system from basic to advanced for eCommerce business.
• Easy integration with a variety of 3rd party services.
• Because it is an open-source code platform, businesses can plan to expand their website in the future.
• The cost of building an eCommerce website is not too high compared to other open-source platforms like Magento, with total annual costs ranging from $110 to $1,500+ for domains, hosting, themes, extensions, plugins, etc.
• eCommerce website implementation time with WooCommerce takes about 1 to 3 months to complete.

Cons:

• The functional system is still limited in terms of features specific to the furniture industry.
• The scalability is not as high compared to other open-source platforms such as Open Cart, Magento because it depends on the WordPress system.

=> Rating: 3/4

WooCommerce will be suitable for furniture businesses who are familiar with the WordPress platform and want to develop an eCommerce system.

Magento

Magento is a popular open-source commerce platform in the field of eCommerce, with nearly 200,000 websites in use. Currently, Magento has 2 versions: Magento Open Source (free), and Magento Commerce (paid).

Pros:

• Many furniture themes from the global developer community and Magento website developers so businesses can use existing themes which easy to customize or use self-designed themes.
• Easy integration with a variety of 3rd party services.
• High scalability: multi-language, currency, easy future feature development.

Cons:

• There is no repository of themes from Magento to support businesses.
• Implementation typically takes three to six months, but it might take up to a year due to a sophisticated functioning system.
• Although the platform is free to use, the cost of implementing eCommerce with Magento is quite high, about $50,000-$100,000 depending on the complexity of the project.

=> Rating: 4/4

Magento is appropriate for a range of furniture business types, including B2B, B2C, and B2B2C, as well as for various business sizes, including start-ups, SMEs, and major companies. However, large organizations use Magento because it is frequently relatively expensive to deploy.

Choosing the right platform is an extremely important first step when building an interior eCommerce website. Choosing the right eCommerce platform will help businesses save budget and time to build a website while increasing competitive advantage and sustainable growth. On the contrary, when choosing the wrong platform, it will cost businesses a lot of time and budget to deploy and switch platforms many times. Therefore, businesses need to consider the goals and problems in the current model to be able to choose the most suitable platform.

With many years of experience in successfully implementing eCommerce for many customers in many countries, SECOMM specializes in providing consulting services with comprehensive and professional eCommerce implementation solutions. 

Contact SECOMM today for free support and advice.