by Coaster recently rebranded its Lead Generation Engine in an effort to bring more value to its furniture retail partners. It rolled updates out in phases to about 300 dealers to start, and by the end of Q1 next year, Coaster expects to have a majority of qualified retailers on board.
The engine gives Coaster products a better chance of ranking higher in an online search in each market, which then gives a Coaster dealer an improved chance to rank higher in search in their market when a shopper searches for furniture.
“It’s part of the promise we made to our dealer base to continue to drive consumers any way we can to their retail store,” Don Deeds, Coaster’s executive vice president of marketing says about the technology.
Coaster has a “Where to Buy” button on its website, so when the shopper goes to their site and wants to purchase an item, they can use the button to find retailers near them. The system shows both list view and map view, and all contact details are maintained within the locator.
Deeds says this will drive more shoppers from online into the store, improve the entire shopping experience for the customer, help retailers capture leads online as well as share all warehouse in-stock products as available to each associated dealer.
The lead generation tool is what connects the customer intention with a store — the shopper chooses the store to view the product, completes a form, and the system sends this as an email directly to the registered email.
All of the information required for a retailer to contact the customer is included, along with details of how to get the product to a retailer’s store in the event that they don’t have it in stock.
“The advantages with respect to the customer are immediately obvious,” Deeds says. “From the dealer’s perspective, you now have real-time access to all the available stock in the Coaster warehouse to be delivered in time for the customer’s appointment.”
The product category pages work by taking all the current Coaster categories and matching them to the most popular keyword searches in every dealer’s geographic area.
“Consideration is given to current inventory to ensure that what’s available is given priority, Deeds explains. “From here, shoppers are provided with stock information and a selection of dealers for them to choose where to see the product. We’re not giving any consideration to dealer inventory as we’re providing the technology to ensure that it’s made available to retailers in a specified timeframe to show to the customer.”
While several retailers are in the test phase, they have given feedback that’s helped Coaster make improvements, according to Deeds, such as how long it takes a retailer to respond to a customer request.
“We’re still looking for the sweet spot in what the consumer and retailer feel comfortable with,” Deeds says. “Many have said they made sales on it, so we know we have something. We plan on making this available to the majority of our dealer base, and the bigger picture is the Coaster Community Network, which is something that’s been out there in conversation with our dealer base but it hasn’t been a direct focus yet because we wanted these programs in place. The next step is to add digital advertising for the site to attract more traffic.”
