Selling furniture on otto.de: what is different about ranking sofas, wardrobes and beds

How buyers search for furniture on otto.de

For a kettle one word is enough. For a sofa the buyer already has a picture in mind: the width that fits the living room, the colour that matches the floor, the material. The search terms look accordingly: 'ecksofa 250 cm', 'kleiderschrank 200 cm weiß', 'boxspringbett 180x200 grau'. Alongside them, style terms ('sofa skandinavisch', 'sideboard industrial') and functions ('schlafsofa mit bettkasten', 'esstisch ausziehbar').

For your keyword set this means: the bare generic term matters, but it is rarely the term that sells. The dimension and colour combinations are.

Attributes beat copy

Furniture categories on otto.de have many filters: width, height, depth, colour, material, seats, sleeping surface, style, assembly service. Buyers use them heavily, and a product without a maintained attribute drops out of the filtered list no matter how good the title is. Check for every piece:

• Are all dimensions stored as numbers in the attribute, not only in the text?
• Is the colour named with the word buyers use ('grau' rather than only 'anthrazitmeliert')?
• Are material and style set?
• Is the category right? A sofa bed filed under 'Sofas' instead of 'Schlafsofas' loses the buyers who arrive through category navigation.

A rank tracker shows you the effect: after dimensions are filled in, products often appear within days for dimension terms where they were 'not found' before.

Variants: one page, one position

A sofa in six colours and two widths is usually one product page with twelve variants on otto.de. The page ranks, not the individual variant. Two consequences. First, every variant benefits from the reviews and sales of the strongest one. Second, your rank tracker measures one position per page; 'ecksofa grau' and 'ecksofa beige' can show the same page at different positions, because the search takes the matching variant into account.

So set up variants consistently under one product reference, and track the page with the colour and dimension terms of the most important variants, not only with the generic term.

Delivery time and freight shipping

Furniture ships by freight carrier, often with lead times of one to four weeks. Buyers see the delivery time in the result list and on the product page, and they compare. Whether otto.de factors delivery time into the sort order, OTTO does not say; what is certain is that a long lead time costs purchases, and purchases in turn support the ranking. Products you hold in stock should show that in their delivery time. An optional assembly service is a buying argument for large pieces that can be visible in the result list.

Images that win in the result list

In a list of 120 sofas the main image decides the click. Cut-out product images are mandatory, but the result list shows what works: products whose main image conveys size and proportions get clicked more than those where an armchair and a three-seater look the same. Check page 1 of your head term and compare your image with the neighbours; the rank tracker tells you who the neighbours are.

The keyword set for a piece of furniture

A workable set per product:

1. The generic term ('ecksofa') as the yardstick, even if you sit on page 2 there.
2. Two dimension terms in the most common spellings ('ecksofa 250 cm', 'ecksofa 250x180').
3. One or two colour or material terms of the best-selling variants.
4. One function or style term, if the product fulfils it ('ecksofa mit schlaffunktion').

With a range of hundreds of pieces, prioritise by revenue: the 20 percent that bring most of the revenue get the full set, the rest the generic term and one dimension term.

Frequently asked questions