Introduction

Since Amazon started selling books online, the online shopping market has seen exponential growth for obvious reasons. You can even buy furniture from online stores. On the other hand, you can also search for “furniture repair near me” and hire professionals to repair it. Let’s check out why buying furniture online is better than going into a store.

The Discussion

1. Ease and convenience – One of the greatest advantages of buying furniture from online stores is that everything is just a tap away. Unlike regular stores, online stores are open all the time, 365 days. You don’t need to free up your busy schedule for buying new furniture. Instead, you can browse furniture websites and download apps on your phone to browse through their catalog. You can do it at home, at work, or even while you’re commuting.

You aren’t limited to a few stores at your location either. Big online furniture stores usually have warehouses near you for swift delivery. Even if you browse the online store of a small furniture shop thousands of miles away, you can buy that furniture. Moreover, there’s fierce competition in the online market and that’s why all of them try to deliver the best piece of furniture at an affordable price in the shortest possible time.

2. Shipping – When you buy furniture from brick-and-mortar stores, you need to spend gas money to browse a few shops near you. Moreover, after you buy the furniture, you have to pay a small fee to get it shipped to your home. You can save the shipping cost when you buy furniture from online stores.

As mentioned above, online furniture stores have fierce competition and that means everyone’s trying to offer you the best deal for your business. That’s why most of them offer free shipping. Some of them go the extra mile and offer free assembly services. You don’t need to deal with screws or bolts and directly use the furniture.

3. Discounts and offers – Brick and mortar stores have too many overhead expenses. They need to hire good sales staff and provide them with a good commission for selling the furniture. They also need to pay exorbitant rent for a commercial space in a prominent location. That’s why offline stores aren’t able to offer a lot of discounts. Instead, they raise the prices of their existing products and slap a sale sticker with discount offers to create the illusion of low prices. Their customers have a few local options, and they just need to beat the local competition.

Contrary to that, online stores offer the best prices for obvious reasons. Online stores don’t need to buy or rent a large brick-and-mortar store. Some online stores open a couple of experience centers where you can test out some of their furniture, but that’s about it. Instead, online stores rent giant warehouses.

The large scale helps them to keep overhead costs low. Moreover, online stores have to compete with all the search results that pop up on google. That’s why they offer low prices with thinner margins. Instead of making large profits on each sale, they try to sell as many pieces as possible and win with sales volume. Offline stores can never beat their prices.

Moreover, some online stores are owned by furniture manufacturers themselves. This helps to cut down on middlemen and that allows them to pass on the benefit to their customers. No wonder online furniture buyers get incredible discounts and offers.

4. Wide variety of options – Even the largest offline stores have limited options and variety with their furniture pieces. When you go to Home Depot or Ikea, you will find a few great pieces of furniture. However, they always lack variety. That’s because variations require more space and that translates to a higher rental cost. It’s even worse if the customers are overwhelmed by too many choices in that limited time in the store and remain indecisive.

Online stores don’t need to worry about any of that. They may have one or more warehouses with endless options for the same piece of furniture. You would be able to customize a table with different tabletops, materials, legs, and more. You can choose from endless styles. Online stores don’t need to worry even if their customers have a “fear of missing out”.

They have a record of the items you browsed and have algorithms to show you similar items and designs or push you for the sale with customized offers on your email address. So, even if the customer is indecisive, online stores have a lot of time to convince their customers to make a sale with better offers and more options.

5. AR and Easy returns – The greatest advantage of offline stores is that you get to test out the furniture and see the proportions in real-time. However, with advancements in technology, online stores have begun to bridge the gap. Some of them have apps that allow you to use your phone’s camera and visualize the furniture in your room with the help of Augmented Reality.

That’s not all. Online furniture stores also offer easy returns to boost customer confidence. So, customers can buy furniture, get it delivered, test it at home for a few days and then return it for a different piece of furniture or a refund if they aren’t satisfied. This completely nullifies the advantage of offline stores.

6. Pushy salesmen – Moreover, customers who like to browse furniture pieces with some peace and quiet aren’t able to do that in a store. Salesmen get incentivized to sell furniture and that makes them very persistent and at times pushy. This can ruin your furniture buying experience. Instead, you can relax on your existing couch, play some calming music in the living room and order a new couch from your phone or laptop.

Conclusion

While you get the convenience of feeling and testing out the furniture at offline stores, online shopping has far more benefits that outweigh those cons. You can also search for “furniture repair near me” and get your broken furniture repaired by pros.