As with many industry-specific software platforms, lighting showroom software can definitely feel behind the curve when it comes to features and usability.
That said, showroom owners aren’t just looking for something shiny–they want a solution that can be easily plugged in to their existing organization and have an immediate, positive impact.
Here are the most essential features that any lighting showroom software should include:
- ERP/Accounting Integrations. In addition to managing inventory, lighting showroom software should be able to sync up with a billing and accounting system. Some common examples are Windward, Profit 21, Eclipse, Savance, or Quickbooks. Not being able to push product data, transactions, and customer information automatically means adding even more overhead to this process.
- Contractor/Designer Portals. When a significant part of your business comes from repeat customers, having a dedicated login opens the door for individual pricing, custom catalogs, and much more.
- Featured Sorting. Every showroom has products that sell more than others or have better margins, which means you’ll want to put those products in front of your customers. Being able to prioritize search results based on manufacturer, on-hand inventory, IMAP holidays, staff picks, and more can improve the customer experience and your sales numbers.
- Specialized Feeds. Loading product data into your own website is a great start, but there are a number of other places you may want your products to show as well. Options for sending your lighting product data to platforms such as Houzz, Amazon, Shopify, Magento, and more casts a wider net to bring in sales to your business.
- SEO-Friendly Product Pages. Search engines give preference to product pages that contain clean page URLs that relate to the page content. Many software platforms show a part number or an arbitrary identifier, which contributes to lower rankings in search results. That can easily translate into lost sales.
As with any new product, the trick is to understand what you need new software for, vet the software that can fulfill those needs, and which ones stand out based on price point, features, scalability, and so on.
The next software you use to power your showroom should integrate with your existing workflow and make life easier.