Allowing customers to order furniture for delivery services to send to their homes by using their smartphones has proven to be a successful move for British retailer Furniture Village, which has revealed that the average basket value of goods bought using its mobile website has surpassed that of its main website.

The retailer worked with m-commerce specialist We Love Mobile in an attempt to optimise its offering for smartphones and tablets, and attributes its newfound success to greater accessibility and usability on the mobile site.

Launched after Christmas, the website is designed to require fewer taps-to-purchase than many other sites, streamlining the shopping process and making it easier for consumers to carry out their shopping plans quickly and efficiently.

Charlie Harrison, head of ecommerce at Furniture Village, said the mobile site has created "a new shopping experience" for its users because of its multichannel possibilities, explaining that it is not uncommon to see a customer browsing the site on their smartphone in-store while sitting on the sofa they are considering purchasing.

"We wanted to make buying furniture as easy as possible for our customers. Our new mobile website delivers an exciting new touch-point and we're looking forward to seeing what we can do with this in future," added Mr Harrison.

His enthusiasm was matched by managing director of We Love Mobile Simon Liss, who argued that well-designed, accessible m-commerce sites are especially important for retailers selling high-value items like furniture.

"A highly-optimised mobile internet experience in-store, at home or at the till creates greater purchase confidence," suggested the managing director.

We Love Mobile also carried out a great deal of research on other retailers' mobile offerings, finding that on average seven pages had to be negotiated by consumers using smartphones before landing on a product purchase page.

For Furniture Village only two pages are involved, simplifying the process for shoppers.

The KPMG Consumer Markets CFO Survey recently found that 36 per cent of UK chief financial officers expect mobile commerce to be a crucial driver of online sales over the next year.

Author:  Paul Burn