Technological innovation is at the core of the great customer experience your interior design team is able to offer to your customers. Their wealth of knowledge and experience combined with the use of key tech and marketing tools allow your interior design team to interact directly with your customers. That’s why interior design technology for retail is so important.
When we look at interior design technology to leverage for interior design, your store’s website is line item number one. In our previous content, we discuss some of the powerful ways you can use a website to launch your interior design services. But have you considered using your website as a retail engine for your design staff?
Website and interior design technology isn’t just the front-end digital showroom. It’s the engine of online product data that powers it. It’s the online technologies that customize the experience of your website for the consumer. We’ll go in-depth about all of the product visualization technologies that work as both an online sales tool and an in-store sales tool for your designers to leverage.
Using Marketing Technology to Sell Design
You and your interior design team share just a taste of what’s possible. You’re telling a story and sharing examples of the dream that can be a reality for your customers. You’re also making use of a powerful interior design sales tool. Marketing. Marketing technology will empower your design staff to sell the vision to potential shoppers in their own time. When your interior design team can offer any insight and immersion to your customers, you’re creating exactly what your customers need and want. It helps them to get to the answers. An immersive experience through marketing can help them feel like it’s the right decision.
The goal of your marketing and immersive interior design technology strategies is to connect with your clients where they are.
How Designers Sell through Social Media
Create a plan for how you and your interior design team will best use your social media platforms to promote your product, and increase conversions. Consider the key features and benefits of each platform: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.
You’re tapping into the greatest needs and desires of your customer base, but you must take care to not overextend yourself. You may find that some platforms will be effective for your marketing efforts. That’s why we offer consultative marketing services to help you make the best use or your social marketing efforts.
Online Technologies for Designers
Your customers are your most important asset. That’s why we spend so much time talking about them. And looking at ways to best address their wants and needs. Your customers are independent consumers who want control. They have a self-directed buyer’s journey. That’s not to say that you aren’t part of that process. You should make every effort to connect with your customers. And get them the resources and answers they are looking for. That means that you must put into place strategies and standalone solutions that will meet their needs even when you’re not standing right there with them.
Optimize Your Website Capabilities
Your most powerful advocate is your website. Even if it’s not alive in the traditional sense of the word, it’s a living, breathing entity. It matters, and it is the first contact point that you’ll have with your customers. Make the best of that first contact. You rarely get a second chance to make a great first impression. So, make it count. Your website optimization is an important interior design sales tool.
Use Room Planning Tools
Much like the function of CAD for your designers, it’s easy to use online tools built into your website. Give your designers access to these tools, like an online room planner, to build projects for potential clients. Once they customize the products and place them into the room plan, they can share it everywhere:
- Social Media
- Designer Portfolio Pages
- Email Marketing
- Blog Content
Create a Compelling Online Shopping Experience
Use onsite tools in the store to personalize that shopping journey. We’ve found incredible value in using style-finder quizzes to guide shoppers through unlimited options and find the perfect match for their home. MicroD knows how important it is to facilitate a strong online shopping experience. That’s why we launched the new iNGAGE platform. It’s designed to support customer engagement, with a personalized online shopping experience. It’s designed to offer an all-in-one solution that features product offers, compelling messaging, and marketing promotions. So, you’re not only able to funnel your customers through your products and design services in an easy-to-use and navigate solution, but the primary goal is to qualify your leads, gather your contacts, and then convert your prospects into sales.
Visualization Technology to Entice Buyers
In the past, if a shopper wanted to know how a piece of furniture looked in his home, he had to buy it first. If he wasn’t happy, he brought it back. Maybe some photos from a catalog could help him in the buying process. But the personalization wasn’t there. It was all up to the shopper’s imagination.
Ah, the good old days.
Now that the buyer’s journey starts online, you need a digital technique to attract buyers to your store. With the creativity of your interior design staff and great interior design technology, you can attract more shoppers to visit your store.
Online product visualization is incredibly powerful. For retailers, it provides a connection between the showroom product and the online presentation of the product. Which means for the consumers, it’s a more WYSIWYG shopping experience. What you see is what you get. And that helps you, the retailer, save on returns or unhappy customers.
Advanced Product Visualization
Product visualization comes in many forms on retail websites. From showcasing products in high definition to customizable furniture tools, product visualization puts consumers in the driver’s seat on design. But in the hands of your interior design staff, these tools have a much greater impact.
For example, custom draping offers customizable furniture selections. Your designers can use this tool to create one of a kind furniture pieces with different covers and finishes. All while using your website as the sales engine.
The idea here is that you’re determining the best ways to demonstrate how the products will look. Seeing really is believing. You’re offering educational resources and forums that allow your customers to continue their research into solutions that will work best for them. By allowing customers to access to your interior designers for technologically enhanced product visualization, you are giving them all the information they need; without scaring them away with overpowered sales strategies. These are really interior design sales tools.
3D Technology
When it comes to 3D interior design technology, we know many retailers are looking for ways to make an impact. The investment is a challenge for many retailers. But for those that already made the investment, the value is showing in the numbers.
In the hands of your interior design staff, 3D technology online and in the store is tremendous. Instead of powering up CAD with generic products, you can use 3D models of furniture that lives in your warehouse.
MicroD works with retailers and manufacturers on this trend-setting 3D technology. OmniVueXR gives you a 360-degree look at the product from every possible angle, with 4K resolution and a myriad of product customization options. It’s the best way for your customers to try it before you buy it, and it helps to prevent buyer’s remorse and returns. It’s the best way to try out the limitless range of possibilities. It’s a great interior design sales tool.
Online Technologies for Designers
Your customers are your most important asset. That’s why we spend so much time talking about them. And looking at ways to best address their wants and needs. Your customers are independent consumers who want control. They have a self-directed buyer’s journey. That’s not to say that you aren’t part of that process. You should make every effort to connect with your customers. And get them the resources and answers they are looking for. That means that you must put into place strategies and standalone solutions that will meet their needs even when you’re not standing right there with them.
Optimize Your Website Capabilities
Your most powerful advocate is your website. Even if it’s not alive in the traditional sense of the word, it’s a living, breathing entity. It matters, and it is the first contact point that you’ll have with your customers. Make the best of that first contact. You rarely get a second chance to make a great first impression. So, make it count. Your website optimization is an important interior design sales tool.
Use Room Planning Tools
Much like the function of CAD for your designers, it’s easy to use online interior design technology built into your website. Give your designers access to these tools, like an online room planner, to build projects for potential clients. Once they customize the products and place them into the room plan, they can share it everywhere:
- Social Media
- Designer Portfolio Pages
- Email Marketing
- Blog Content
Create a Compelling Online Shopping Experience
Use onsite tools in the store to personalize that shopping journey. We’ve found incredible value in using style-finder quizzes to guide shoppers through unlimited options and find the perfect match for their home. MicroD knows how important it is to facilitate a strong online shopping experience. That’s why we launched the new iNGAGE platform. It’s designed to support customer engagement, with a personalized online shopping experience. It’s designed to offer an all-in-one solution that features product offers, compelling messaging, and marketing promotions. So, you’re not only able to funnel your customers through your products and design services in an easy-to-use and navigate solution, but the primary goal is to qualify your leads, gather your contacts, and then convert your prospects into sales.
Why Interior Design Technology is So Important to Your Retail Experience
Technology is the key and the platform for a myriad of powerful solutions that can help you educate and inspire your customers. They won’t all come to you with the same experience or knowledge, and that’s why it’s so important to offer engaging offline experiences (like info sessions and one-on-one consulting, in addition to your marketing and other sales solutions.
How MicroD Can Help Your Design Team
Some customers will love the tech, find all the demos and resources on your website and come to your store ready to buy. Other customers will have no experience with home furnishings. It may be the first time they bought a new piece of furniture, and they really need your help. It’s important to determine where each customer is in their buying journey, but where their fears and hesitations come in. Perhaps most important, though, remember to make a connection and gather their contact information, so that you can reach out to them and tell them about future promotions, events, and other activities.
At MicroD, we offer the products and services that support a technological revolution in the retail space. It’s especially important for companies like yours and you’re already in the perfect place to jump in full-tilt, making use of these powerful and inspiring interior design sales tools. We don’t expect you to figure it out all on your own. That’s why we offer the services and support that are designed to take all the guesswork and confusion out of the development and implementation of these solutions.
You’ve seen the product visualization, website solutions, digital marketing solutions, and 3D room planning interior design technology. But, there’s more to it than just the services we offer. We are knowledgeable in the challenges that you face in your industry. Our focus is on the home furnishings’ industry. We take pride in our carefully honed level of knowledge and experience, and we put it to work for you. Contact us today to learn more about ways you can start putting our technological solutions to work for you.