Escaping to a cabin in the wilderness away from people seemed to be appealing for some consumers in the midst of a pandemic. At least that’s what cabin furnishings retailer Cabin Place found. Its online sales picked up significantly in 2020 compared with 2019, says Andrew Scherr, vice president of ecommerce
“We did well, better than expected even. And demand never slowed down,” he says without revealing exact figures. For example, site visits skyrocketed 200.3% to 79,354 visits in July 2020 from 26,424 visits in February 2020, according to data from web measurement firm Similar Web. Since then, visits remain elevated, never dropping below 57,000.
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Cabin Place, which sells “everything but the floors and walls” for a cabin, does 100% of its business online. But there’s just a small team behind the retailer, and it can’t execute all of its ideas alone, Scherr says.
As 2020 progressed, Cabin Place discovered it had two different types of customers and its site needed to cater to both. For example, it found that one type of shopper is browsing for a few smaller products, such as kitchen towels, throw pillows or bedding, while the other type is looking to outfit his entire cabin from scratch with bunk beds, a dining room table set and area rugs.
To better cater to its shoppers, Cabin Place wanted to upgrade its search function, modify its product listing pages and categories and add product recommendations. The retailer had been using on-site search vendor Searchspring for a few years for its site search functionality, but chose to add additional features in mid-2020, Scherr says.
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