January 08, 2019

Step by step from online showroom to online furniture shop

Friedhelm Schaffrath GmbH & Co. KG has successfully made its next move into the online furniture market. In the summer of 2018, after two years of online presence in a showroom format, the Rhineland-based furniture retailer launched a fully transactional eCommerce platform and opened a true online shop.

About Möbel Schaffrath

The name Schaffrath is closely linked to the city of Mönchengladbach—where Friedhelm Schaffrath opened his first store, a lamp and lighting shop, 60 years ago. Today, Schaffrath is the number one furniture retailer in the Rhineland, one of the top ten furniture stores in Germany, and a member of the Begros furniture buying association. With its diverse range of products and excellent quality, Schaffrath’s furniture stores, mega kitchen stores, and kitchen markets have become widely known beyond regional borders, attracting loyal customers from neighboring countries. Year after year, Schaffrath invests millions of euros in renovations and new constructions to remain the undisputed market leader in the Lower Rhine region. In nationwide comparisons of furniture giants, the Rhinelanders have consistently secured a spot in the top ten.

Schaffrath Managing Director Marc Fahrig

challenge

Even a top dog in the stationary furniture trade is not left untouched by the effects of increasing online consumption. In order to increase presence in the store, Schaffrath looked online for new ways to reach its target groups and motivate them to visit the furniture store.

Implementation

The functions have been continuously optimized over a period of two years. The loading times were accelerated by 50 percent and new functions were tested. These include:

The next logical step will follow in June 2018. Schaffrath entered furniture e-commerce with an online shop with a shopping cart, checkout, payment and order processing for a selected range of take-away items that could be shipped without a freight forwarder.

SHOPMACHER also developed an online showroom for the Knuffmann chain, which has belonged to Schaffrath since 2003, on the same technical basis. Here, too, customers can obtain information online and query the availability of their favorite furniture in the Knuffmann branches.

The platform was designed and developed as part of a monthly updated product backlog, which was implemented in sprints with secured developer resources from SHOPMACHER, and the continuous expansion was driven forward. It was important that the Schaffrath employees could make changes to the shop front end themselves and did not have to consult the agency every time. This applies not only to images and texts, but also to many other areas such as campaigns or sales promotion measures.

In the further development of the shop, retailers and agency are strongly data-driven. The following key figures are constantly analyzed:

• Which pages are interesting?
• Where do visitors disembark?
• Where are purchases canceled?
• Does the search work?
• Are there stumbling blocks in the checkout?
• Do item detail pages lead to purchase or abandonment?

Result

With the launch of the sales function, Schaffrath increased the number of unique visitors in the shop by 25 percent. The conversion rate increased by 25 percent monthly after the shop was launched. Sales increased very significantly.

CHARACTERISTICS