Do You Prefer To Buy Furniture In-stores Or Online?
Recently, a news got my attention and made me feel good about Ashely: Ashley HomeStore donated more than $55000 worth of household products. The donation will be used to help 55 families transition from homelessness to self-sufficiency. As one of the major giants of American furniture chain stores, Ashley HomeStore has more than 2000 branches around the world.
People seem to be more used to buying furniture in stores. Because people want to personally feel the fabric and size of furniture and test the firmness of furniture. But this did not stop Ashley from developing digital marketing.
Auxiliary functions
The content presented by Ashely website and mobile app makes me feel that they are very considerate of customers. From the perspective of customers and strive to improve the user experience.
Ashley provides real-time chat widgets on both websites and applications. This can provide additional help for online users, similar to the personalized help that people can find in physical stores. Ashley also works with a company called eSSENTIAL Accessibility. The company provides assistive technology and web accessibility services to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to its website. The user experience Department of the company later carried out more cooperation between Ashely and eSSENTIAL Accessibility to improve the user experience. eSSENTIAL Accessibility can now review changes or upgrades on Ashley’s website at any time. During these audits, eSSENTIAL Accessibility checks for errors and provides solutions for features on the site that are available to accessibility devices.
Website Layout
From the perspective of website layout, Ashley’s online overall style is simple and clear. The website provides customers with a lot of discount information and limited coupons on the top. I think the good thing is that Ashley provides online chat, telephone and reservation services at the top middle of the website’s home page. Customers don’t have to browse to the bottom of the page to find out how to make an appointment and call.
The mobile phone applications is mainly based on furniture classification. It is easy to view for users. At the lowest end of the application, there is a special column that says chat service. This also makes it easier for customers to ask about products and reflect problems.
Keep Working on UX
Ashley also plans to provide more customers with a unique personalized experience of online shopping types and add advanced features. For example, AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), and computer-generated-image (CGI) are used to enhance the user experience.
