OK. I like marketing. This is no surprise seeing as how I blog about it. But it makes me want to just punch someone in the teeth when a company that does a fantastic job in one component of their marketing drops the ball in another, related component – especially when that area is, you know, the whole making money portion.
In the furniture and real estate and clothing business (as well as others I am sure) staging is an important part of their marketing. That’s why we’ve got manikins and all those creepy things dressed like people. So we can see how awesome the clothes might look. OK, it’s also for those select individuals like myself who happen to not be so great at matching things but still want to look nice. I like to look at the manikin because I figure, hey, if it’s on the manikin and I like how it looks, it probably looks good to other people too and matches (for the record, this hasn’t always been the case). A lot of outlets do this well in the retail store but not so well online (which is unfortunate because it’s a lot cheaper to do this kind of “staging” online and realistically works well with the longtail theory).
IKEA is a place that does a fantastic job of really creating the “staged” environment online. They do really rich (interactive) imaging. I can a get feel for what the room or furniture might look like and through their wonderful, rich imaging of the staged rooms I’m viewing it helps me figure out what pieces I might want (I just moved into a new place). Basically, they do a great job selling me, but that’s where it breaks down.
IKEA can’t close the deal because in these staged environments that IKEA has spent so much to setup, for whatever reason, you can only actually go to view certain products through the interactive image. What this means is that when I am looking at their image and see a great bed frame I want to buy, I can’t click on the bed frame to buy, because they’re apparently just promoting a dresser (of the same brand) on this “stage”. Worse yet, I don’t even get a link that takes me to a list of all the products shown for that staged bedroom. You know, in the event I liked the sheets, too (for the record, the ones I want are not the same as the one in the image above).
Of course, a simple search for the brand MALM doesn’t actually return results of all products on their site that is the brand MALM. It only returns some. I have no idea why. Either the guy who did their backend database architecture got a little lazy so the search isn’t quite referencing all the right table elements or they haven’t used Google enough. User expectations are important, and Google set the standard. When I search for MALM. I expect all of MALM. I don’t enjoy the adventure of trying to find out where the heck this bed frame is on your site so I can buy it, Mr. IKEA.
If you’re going to invest the money in doing a fantastic job of marketing your products to me, make sure to make it easy for me to find all the products you’re trying to market to me because I just might want them all. Oh, and then actually let me buy them.
Update: Fixed typo in title. Sorry about that. It was late and the title was giving me grief as it was : )
Moreover, have you ever actually tried to buy something on the IKEA site? Half the stuff isn’t even available online, just their stores. So frustrating!
Wait, so you can’t order it online and have their store ship it to you? I wasn’t really paying attention, I just assumed that that was the case for mine :(
I completely understand what you mean. I love IKEA. Used to travel from NYC to Jersey to go to the closest store near me. I had this same complaint about their online mktg yrs ago and it seems it still hasnt been fixed. You think at this point in the game, they would have figured this out by now. interesting…
Even despite the current credit crunch, there is still remarkably a high number of shops that havnt taken the route to building a shop online.