Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Ergonomic Furniture Online Stores

Ergonomic Online Stores Part 3

Our last section on ergonomic stores reviewed online stores primarily focused on ergonomic accessories, such as keyboards, tracking devices, or keyboard trays. In this section, we research and review online stores primarily focused on ergonomic furniture such as office chairs.






Ergonomic furniture online stores





Kare Products opens up as an attractive, airy, and attractive site. It focuses primarily on chairs but it also has ergonomic furniture and accessories. Its inventory is fair, and it does not distribute most top end brands, focusing instead on budget, value and mid range categories. There is little information in the product pages - not enough to make informed decisions. There are no product reviews, or chat. There are no builders for complex products, or shopping guides. There is no generic or product specific ergonomic information. There are no store reviews or testimonials, and no resellerratings reviews. While it does very well on Google search placement, the company does not seem to focus on online sales, and the site appears to be a secondary sales channel to the brick and mortar operation.

Ergo4me is a direct sales site for  ErgoGenesis, the manufacturer of made-to-order ergonomic chairs brand Bodybilt. It focuses on chairs, which it is most well known for, but also carries a small number of keyboard trays. It carries ErgoGenesis proprietary chairs, and no others. The site is nondescript with a very standard e-commerce look-and-feel. It provides a good interactive chair builder, easy to use, yet detailed. There is some good product information on the product page, although not as much as we would have wanted. The site encourages you to call in to an in-store ergonomic consultant who will help you make the right selections. There are no product reviews or chat, testimonials are anonymous, and the site carries no resellerratings reviews. Perfect Back Chair is another site operated by ErgoGenesis.

Ergonomic Chair Pro is totally positioned as an ergonomic chair site, through its name and appearance. It has a slightly awkward look-and-feel that does not feel quite natural. The store carries a large inventory of many ergonomic chairs across most high end brands, including Humanscale, Knoll, Ergohuman, Steelcase, Neutral Posture, and Bodybilt, missing Herman Miller. It provides a significant amount of product information on the product pages (although not always as much as you would like), and has specialized chair builders for those chairs that require a complex set of options. The site has chat, product reviews (although few are in existence), some staff recommendations, and limited generic ergonomic information. It proposes access to certified ergonomists through the phone to select the right chair. The company accepts Paypal and Google Checkout. There are no testimonials or resellerratings reviews. This is a true ergonomic store.

Ergonomic Chairs Direct is a traditional e-commerce site focused on ergonomic chairs, and lets you select these chairs through multiple feature selections. The shopping work flow is efficient, although without any ergonomic color to it. The store has a very broad inventory of products, but distributes almost none of the high reputation brands. It focuses mostly on budget or mid-range products. The site has product reviews, no chat, and a good amount of product information on the product pages. There are no chair builders - or no chairs that require chair builders. There is no generic or product-specific ergonomic information. There are no testimonials or resellerratings reviews. While this site's product range focuses on ergonomic chairs, it is not a true ergonomic store.

Office Designs provides a simple and friendly site, focused almost solely on office furniture with a strong emphasis on seating, but which carries a very limited amount of other ergonomic products. It distributes most of the high reputation ergonomic hair brands, including Humanscale, Steelcase, Herman Miller, Knoll, and Neutral Posture. There is, in general, a good amount of product information on the product page, although much of is in secondary links or needs to be downloaded. There is no general or product-specific ergonomic information. The site has chat, but no product reviews or testimonials, and carries a single but excellent review on resellerratings. It is commercially linked to  Home Office Solutions, a very similar site.While this site carries a large number of ergonomic chairs, it is a furniture retailer rather than an ergonomic store.

Sit4Less  is large chair retailer with broad inventory of many of the best brands ergonomic chairs, including Herman Miller, Haworth, Humanscale and Knoll. The site has a standard e-commerce lay-out, and is easy to navigate and use. It has product reviews (although only a limited number of them actually exist), no chat, and no store reviews.There is a good amount of product information on the product pages. There are good product builders for all the advanced chairs that need multiple options selection. There is no generic ergonomic information, but there is some product-specific ergonomic information for some high end chairs. There are many negative resellerratings reviews, and the site scores badly there. The quality of the site is somewhat counterbalanced by the poor resellerratings showing.

Sit Correct  has a friendly layout that is easy to navigate and use. The store focuses on ergonomic chairs, but also carries a very limited amount of ergonomic accessories. It has a very broad inventory of products (248 computer chairs...), but does not distribute many of the high reputation brands, and seems to focus on budget, value and mid range chairs. The site provides useful durability and value ratings on all products. The product information found on the product pages is limited, and there is no chat. The site offers the ability to write product reviews, although there are very few at this time. There is no generic or product specific ergonomic information. There are no store reviews, no resellerratings reviews.  Despite its focus, this store is more an e-commerce site than an ergonomic store.

Sit Better  is a typical e-commerce site with a slightly tacky lay-out and prices outlined in red. There are a few broken pages. The store focuses largely on chairs and seating, but carries a small number of ergonomic accessories. It distributes some selected high reputation brands, including Humanscale and Ergohuman, although the bulk of the inventory focuses on brands of lesser reputation, typically with a mid-range price. It is clearly geared towards the large corporate customer. The amount of product information on the product pages is somewhat limited, but multiple pictures are generally displayed for each product.  The site provides a useful ergonomic rating for each chair. It offers the capability to write product reviews, of which there are quite a few in existence. There also are some product reviews by the store staff. There is no generic or product-specific ergonomic information available.  The company keeps a blog. There is no store review or testimonials, but the single resellerratings review is good.

Smart Furniture is a very good looking site which focuses on home and office furniture, although it does carry a few office accessories. Despite its broad furniture range, it has s a strong focus on ergonomics, and all of its staff is ergonomics trained. It carries a large number of high reputation ergonomic brands, including Humanscale, Knoll, Steelcase and Herman Miller. There is a large amount of product information on the product pages, more than in almost any other site. There are many product reviews available, as well as numerous staff reviews and "independent" reviews (it is not clear how these independent reviews are commissioned), but no chat. The company uses a "design on demand" workflow allowing customers to configure furniture, and has apparently extended this workflow to some of the high end chairs with multiple options. The resulting chair builders are highly usable. The store encourages the user to ask for designer/ expert assistance on the phone. A simple chair shopping guide covers a few of the best selling chairs. There are no store reviews or resellerratings reviews, and testimonials are anonymous.

Next we review full range ergonomic stores... So come back soon!

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