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I need to outfit a new house - first time in many years. So naturally, since I was (until a few minutes ago) a self-proclaimed SEARCH EXPERT, I hit the search engines.
I need a bedroom set, a sofa, some chairs, perhaps a sectional system for the home theatre. I basically need what everyone needs - I need to go furniture shopping.
Dear Google: show me stuff for "furniture shopping in CITYNAME" or "furniture stores in CITYNAME" or "furniture shopping ZIPCODE".
Garbage. Completely useless link farms. Nothing but "buy-beanbags-online-from-me.tld" and "another-local-portal-site-with-no-real-listings-but-opportunistic-reciprocals.tld"
Hey, I did notice a conspicuous absence of scraper sites. Is that a GOOD THING? Since I have no options from this serp set, I would much prefer some scraper sites with adsense to the real deals!
So I tried Yahoo and sure enough, the first ten included 5 truly authoritative pages on furniture shopping in and near CITYNAME. Wow. Yahoo is GREAT.
Waitasec. Three of those "authoritative looking snippets" are cloaked versions of the same, useless link farm. Two other rankers are also <snip>rhyming slang</snip> - totally different sites than the Yahoo! indexed snippets (travel portals).
Why is this so hard? Geeesh. Bigticket item, slow to move, costly to inventory, hard to ship, easy to showcase, a good web presence is a real draw for the brick and mortar. You better believe I am going to sit on any chair before I buy it, so I will DEFINITELY VISIT a store that draws me with a decent website. Lots of opportunity to pre-sell me with text and images, and I am not very likely to hit multiple stores in the same morning due to the time I will invest at the store I do visit. So where are the good web stores?
Sure I found (insert the URL of the most obvious, "well done" SEO furniture site here) but when you get down to the details it is basically hawking direct for mass-manufactured furniture companies, or attempting to refer me to a list of stores known to carry those brands. Not very helpful (although deceptively nice looking).
No one is winning this niche (yet).
[edited by: trillianjedi at 12:07 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2005]
[edit reason] Language please ;-) [/edit]
Try doing the same for large appliances, or other items you prolly wouldn't buy anywhere except from b&m.
It's not really the SE's fault, or the SE marketers fault. Both of them are at least in the game. B&M's aren't.
Big Name brick and morter, is still betting the farm on TV and radio ads. They may have a mega budget website, designed by their in-house graphic artists. Very pretty, but useless for search engines, and often with the worst information architecture known to man, so useless for the average surfer....
Ummm.... I'll shut up now, it's all been said in here too many times before.
[edited by: lawman at 8:17 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2005]
[edit reason] No Specifics Please [/edit]
I know these appliance places work on shoestring budgets, paying minimal wages and skiming everywhere they can, with price competition constantly pushing down profits, but that is why the larger chains rule, right? You don't golooking for a "refrigerator store" as much as you probably ask around where the nearest XXXXXX store is (big brand name appliance dealer) in your region. That's why print/radio works for them.
But no co-op advertising between appliances and furniture, for example? Or strong web site for furniture, with hooks back to appliances, moving/relocation, services etc?
Just when it appears everything has been done, it becomes obvious there is alot of opportunity out there.
If I want a recliner in MyCity, MyState I don't want to search for Barcalounger or LazyBoy to get a list of phonenumbers of stores that may have at one time bought wholesale from those makers. I didn't want those brands; I didn't want a list of store numbers to research their inventory. I wanted a recliner... in stock, in MyCity, MyState. I am sellable.... SELL ME WHAT YOU HAVE! Geeesh.
After sveeral days OFFLINE I have learned of about 7 stores in my immediate area, and visited 4 of them so far. Lots of recliners to pick from. None of them were on the web. None of them gave me any paperwork to walk out with... even the ones where I demonstrated strong interest in buying a piece or two, I was not offered any "token" to carry with me.
I have no pity for these guys as they go in and out of business. Maybe someone will be innovative and create an eDelivery business that actually acts as a broker for such things... sell their inventory for a commission, pick it up at th store and deliver it to the customer. I think someone could have sold me that $2500 recliner for $2750 online, promising it was available for local delivery within 2 days or so.
This is still the Wild West Web.
Changing consumer culture takes time.
PERSPECTIVE CHECK:
The first Television broadcasts happened before WWII. It wasn't until the 60s (well over two decades later) that we saw television commercials really start to take hold, the first televised broadcast of a Presidential debate, etc.
And it wasn't until the 70s that the "Jingle" - a holdover from radio days, began to fade from being a primary method of televised commercial (and it still creeps back, now and then).
By comparison, it's only been 10 years since Netscape went public (which was when "That Internet Thing" first hit the public consciousness). I wouldn't be surprised to see it take at least another ten years for traditional companies to fully grasp the power and importance of internet marketing.
20 years is essentially the time it takes for a generation of management, who know and trust "the old way" of doing business to be replaced by the new generation who were weaned on "the new way."
Even the newspaper industry, which has weathered the radio and television revolutions, is unsure of itself at this moment, and unsure of how to deal with the web. And this in an industry where information exchange is their core business.
Don't expect traditional retailers to truly "get it" any time soon.
Here is a link in Atlanta, for example:
[shopping.ajc.com...]
