BY GERRY MORRIS
While there’s no shortage of websites giving advice to mattress shoppers, GoodBed.com offers a store, brand and product locator with consumer reviews and ratings. A forum enables shoppers to pose questions to experts.
Even if you haven’t heard of GoodBed, most retailers are listed in its database of 6,000 mattress retailers and more than 20,000 stores. Started in 2009, the site grew to 2 million visitors last year. Its research shows that of these, 25% were buying that day, 50% within the week and 75% within the month.
GoodBed offers benefits for retailers as well. For example, retailers can “claim” their business profile for free. This gives retailers direct control over the information listed about their store and lets them list important store features, such as product selection and services. It also allows for easy monitoring of your online reputation and the ability to respond to consumer reviews.
Claiming the free profile is a great way for retailers to attract GoodBed’s mattress shoppers to their store. According to site founder Michael Magnuson, “GoodBed is focused on connecting mattress shoppers with good retailers.”
GoodBed’s latest service for retailers is GoodBed Prospects, a lead-generation service in which retailers can respond directly to mattress shoppers by email, in addition to seeing anonymous information about who they are, where they are and what they’re looking for.
Through Jan. 15, retailers who have claimed their profile will get free access to local prospects as the service is rolled out.