Step by step from online showroom to online furniture shop

The name Schaffrath is closely tied to the city of Mönchengladbach, because 60 years ago Friedhelm Schaffrath opened his first store, a lamp and lighting shop. Today Schaffrath is number 1 in the Rhineland, ranks among the top ten furniture retailers nationwide and is a member of the furniture buying group Begros. Thanks to their diverse range and excellent quality, the furniture stores, kitchen mega stores and kitchen markets are now known well beyond the region. Customers from neighboring countries are also among the furniture retailer's regulars. Year after year, Schaffrath invests several million euros in renovations and new buildings to remain the undisputed market leader on the Lower Rhine. In the nationwide comparison of furniture giants, the Rhinelanders have held their own in the top ten for years.

Even a market leader in brick-and-mortar furniture retail is not left untouched by the effects of rising online consumption. To increase foot traffic on the sales floor, Schaffrath looked online for new ways to reach its target groups and motivate them to visit the furniture store.

As early as summer 2016, the company launched an online showroom to be visible on the web through search engines like Google. "We wanted to gather experience, build digitally compatible processes, keep learning and increase visitor numbers in our furniture stores," says Schaffrath Managing Director Marc Fahrig. "We succeeded in boosting foot traffic."

Over a period of two years, the functions were continuously optimized. Load times were sped up by 50 percent and new functions were tested. These include:

• online kitchen planner

• online store finder

• newsletter tool

• connection to eBay, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube

• online application for the Schaffrath family card

• living and themed worlds

• cooking and grilling academy

• online consultation appointment booking

• integration of product videos

• online product inquiries

• optimization of category filters, product lists and product detail pages

In June 2018, the next logical step followed. Schaffrath entered furniture e-commerce with an online shop featuring a shopping cart, checkout, payment and order processing for a curated range of carry-home items that could be shipped without a freight forwarder.

For the Knuffmann chain, which has belonged to Schaffrath since 2003, SHOPMACHER also developed an online showroom on the same technical foundation. Here too, customers can inform themselves online and check the availability of their favorite furniture in the Knuffmann stores.

The platform was designed and developed, and its continuous expansion driven forward, within a monthly updated product backlog implemented in sprints with dedicated developer resources from SHOPMACHER. 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 concerns not only images and texts, but also many other areas such as campaigns or sales promotion measures.

In developing the shop further, retailer and agency take a strongly data-driven approach. The following metrics are analyzed continuously:

• Which pages are interesting?

• Where do visitors drop off?

• Where are purchases abandoned?

• Does the search work?

• Are there stumbling blocks in the checkout?

• Do product detail pages lead to a purchase or to a drop-off?

By launching the sales function, Schaffrath increased the rise in unique visitors to the shop by 25 percent. The conversion rate grew by 25 percent per month after the shop launched. Revenue rose very significantly.