Retail Therapy: Barefoot Floors

Barefoot Floors’ website greets you with zingy orange and a sense of carefree happiness, which is, of course, exactly what they’re offering their customers. Barefoot Floors are selling a concept, not just flooring and that concept is delivered to the browser through a variety of means, video, photo galleries, personal accounts from all members of staff successfully portraying the team, from CEO to Customer Care as a close-knit, highly enthusiastic group who are all 100% sold on the products and services they can offer.



The widespread use of video and story-telling is a great tool for creating brand awareness and drawing the customer into a world, instead of simply presenting products on a flat page. Consumers will feed off the energy and positive attitude of the team in their personal “barefoot stories” which will encourage them to stay longer on the website and browse a greater variety of products.
Potential buyers can browse flooring by product, by room or by sector. Each sub-category contains a list of links. For example, under “by room”, one finds bedroom, bathroom, garden and pathways etc. For each page, suggestions are made as to the collections best suited to those environments, with examples of layout, design and room themes. There is a video of a customer testimonial where they are also invited to tell their “barefoot story”, linking them with the company and further strengthening the impression that this is a company a customer can have complete trust in and form a solid retailer-client relationship. The video also allows for consumers to see exactly how a barefoot floor can fit in a home and what level of customer service the clients enjoyed.


The Products link takes you to the collections, with a designer or customer testimonial and an inside look at who and what inspired the various designs and colours. Brochures are available to download for every collection.
Barefoot Floors have a list of partners, all of whom reflect their concept of carefree, zen living and individuality. The partnership page for garden designer Bernie Quinn features a flip-book photojournal of a barefoot flooring installation as part of the garden designer’s award-winning garden at the Royal horticultural Show.
The overall aim of the website, therefore, is to sell customers an entire lifestyle, based around a flooring product. The stories, images, videos, flip-books and art installations that fill the pages are perfect for the ADD generation whose attention needs constant fulfilment and variety, but also give the impression that when buying barefoot you are buying so much more than a floor, but buying into happiness, a slice of the team’s perfect world. It may sound far-fetched and pretentious, but twenty minutes of browsing on the website and I still wasn’t bored, although a couple of the staff testimonial videos were a touch too sugary for me.



The product barefoot are selling is genuinely creative, stunning to look at and different enough from the norm to hook you in. No amount of fantastic online marketing can flog a duff product, but everything from the slick website design to the high-quality art work and sheer conviction of everyone connected to the company delivers a powerful retail punch.
The only let down? Some missing links and wrong telephone numbers - easy mistakes to make but shocking on a website of this calibre as well as fundamental information for a buyer.

Barefoot Floors

Retail Therapy: www.beautifulflooring.co.uk

Beautiful Flooring online launched just a few months ago and is already popular with visitors with encouraging site monitoring stats to prove it.
The website is the brainchild of Paul Phillips and his team. Paul, who aside from overseeing his own shop, Sunniva Carpeting, in Tunbridge Wells which he opened in 1990, is Managing Director of Bond Retail Marketing Ltd. a sales, marketing and design consultancy serving the carpet and rug industry.

The first thing that strikes me as I log onto the website is how clean and unfussy it is. There are no pop-ups, no overabundance of information, just good quality photography, bold links and a clear interface. The style is reminiscent of a Homes & Gardens-type magazine, probably most appealing to a female client. This, of course, is a stroke of genius. A recent report on women’s online shopping habits, specific to the flooring industry, published in US trade mag National Floor Trends reveals that women are the predominant users of the Internet for domestic purchases. They are better at navigating sites and the majority choose the floor coverings they want to buy before even setting foot in a store, preferring to research and make a choice based on the information found online. In order to do this, they require strong visuals, the possibility of viewing a carpet in-situ, no “hidden cost” prices and inspiration. More than 50% of women visit a retailer’s website before heading to the store and tend only to visit the retailer whose website they find pleasing in terms of “look and content”. Looking good and giving relevant but simple information is key to tapping in to this huge emerging market of shoppers.
www.beautifulflooring.co.uk is designed to inspire above all, to allow the customer to save his/her choices for future reference, and it directs customers to the store, encouraging the consumer to communicate with the retailer for advice and the handling of the purchase.
This is not to say that the website would only appeal to female consumers, it offers such a simple, effective online ordering service and clear instructions that any consumer, male or female, even with a limited understanding of online shopping would be able to successfully purchase their desired floor covering using this website. Visuals and focus on design gives the feeling of buying into an entire lifestyle, rather than just a carpet or a rug, a complete online experience to match those offered by clothing retailers or interior design services.
Users can browse through three main sections: Rugs, Carpet and Other Flooring (vinyl, laminate, etc.), where they can make choices based on brand, colour or style. Again, good interior photography draws the customer in, encouraging them to linger on the site. The My Flooring option allows users to save their choices in a “wishlist” for future reference if they can’t decide on a particular floor. If you have made a choice, you can input the square meterage you require (for carpet), or choose from a variety of sizes and shapes (for rugs), receive an instant price quote before heading to checkout. Customers buying rugs automatically have underlay added to their shopping basket with the option of removing it before paying.

The Beautiful Flooring website becomes personalised to the client based on postcode input and a short message appears before heading to the checkout reminding customers that their local retailer can help with measuring and advice on underlays, runners, stairrods etc. subsequently driving customers into the retailer’s store and adding a human dimension to an otherwise complete online service.
The slide out Imagine Zone is designed to open up clients to new ideas and to showcase interesting designs under different “themes”. Like a mood board of sorts, I initially wasn’t sure I liked it, or understood what its purpose was, until I realised that the appeal of the Imagine Zone is precisely that: it incites curiosity and keeps you on the site.
Statistics reveal that visitors clearly love the look of the site and enjoy browsing, both the bounce rate and average page views beat the industry average. As time goes by, Paul will monitor statistics and gather data on search criteria by visitor to adapt and grow the appeal.
Beautiful Flooring /
www.beautifulflooring.co.uk