In a recent post, I talked about some key highlights from 2012 here at GoodBed.  While it’s always fun to reflect back on our progress, it’s even more important that we share with you — our community of mattress shoppers and mattress business owners — a clear vision for where GoodBed will be going in the coming year.  Internally, we have come to refer to these plans as “GoodBed 2.0“.

Key Goals for 2013

In 2013, we’re focused on 3 main goals:

1. Increase consumer feedback — especially from consumers that would not have ordinarily taken the time to share feedback about their mattress (many of whom are happy with their experience).  This will result in far more useful data for mattress shoppers, and will help business owners be represented much more fairly and accurately.
2. Quantify our impact – our key focus here is on tracking and measuring our ability to connect consumers with great products at great local stores.  This is, after all, the main way we create a win-win for both consumers and businesses.  So we all need a way to know how we’re doing on this!
3. Make people want to share GoodBed — to be sure, part of this is simply creating a great service.  But a service like ours gets more valuable to you the more people are using it.  Consumers benefit from more manufacturer and retailer participation, retailers benefit from more manufacturer and consumer participation, and manufacturers benefit from more retailer and consumer participation.  So it’s important that we provide you with tools that get others to participate.

Almost everything we do this year will be tied to one or more of these goals!

New Initiatives from GoodBed

To meet the goals listed above, the way consumers interact with GoodBed is going to change over the coming year.  In the new and improved interface (being referred to as GoodBed 2.0), we will help guide mattress shoppers through the entire process of deciding what and where to buy.  While we’re not ready to share our entire road map for the year, here’s a sneak peak at a few exciting things we have in store for Q1!

GoodBed Mobile

Well over 90% of mattresses are purchased in local stores — so what kind of a solution would we be if we didn’t provide a tool that consumers can take with them while they’re actually out shopping?!  The GoodBed Mobile app will focus on helping consumers to evaluate beds and choose the best one for them.  Most consumers tell us that when they’re laying on a bed, they don’t know what they should be thinking about, or how to tell whether it’s a good fit for them.  This app will give them a better way to compare and evaluate the beds as they try them, and to remember what they like and don’t like about each one.

Note that this is NOT a “showrooming” app.  This app is simply about helping consumers choose the right bed for them.

Consumers that want to shop with the benefit of the GoodBed Mobile app will be directed to participating retailers, where the app will be most useful.  For participating retailers, an even bigger benefit will be the increased ratings they collect on their products — as products are rated by more consumers, they will stand out more on GoodBed, which in turn attracts more and more consumers to the stores that carry them.

GoodBed Quiz

The GoodBed Quiz is a new tool that will help people find beds available in their area that match their personal mattress criteria.  Ultimately, we expect that many consumers will use the GoodBed Quiz as a starting point for their mattress search.  After providing their criteria, we’ll help mattress shoppers discover brands that may be of interest to them, as well as specific models they should be considering.  From there, consumers will be able to compare these choices, do further research on them, and keep track of the products they like best by adding them to their Saved List.  Then, we’ll let them know what store(s) they should visit in order to go try their Saved Beds in person.

For consumers, this tool will help them narrow the increasingly large and complex universe of available mattress choices.  For participating manufacturers and retailers, this will provide a great way to drive increased visibility, interest, and purchase intent amongst active mattress shoppers.  Even moreso, the GoodBed Quiz enables us to deliver more personalized information, which is especially important in the mattress category, since every person’s mattress needs are unique.

When coupled with GoodBed Mobile, the Quiz provides us with additional metrics related to our ability to connect people with products and stores that they like, as well as the opportunity to collect more consumer feedback.

Streamlined Reviews

Although we’ve always allowed consumers to share feedback about specific products and stores, we’ll now be making this much easier to do.  Consumers will be able to share their feedback by simply answering a few multiple choice questions.  Of course, those people that would like to add some words of their own will still be able to do so, but this will no longer be required.  We expect this streamlined process will yield participation from a much broader group of consumers, and the standardized format of these ratings will allow us to glean many useful insights from this data.

In connection with this new short review form, we’ll also be initiating a new outreach program to our users.  Simply put, we’ll be asking our users to do one small thing in return for getting our help in finding the right bed: pay it forward.  All this means is that we’ll send out an email in 60 days asking a few multiple-choice questions about which bed you bought and how you like it.  We believe this simple request will allow us to collect valuable feedback from people that otherwise would not have thought to come back and review their bed.

Closing Thoughts

At GoodBed, our whole reason for being is to solve problems for you.  More specifically, this means: 1) giving consumers confidence in choosing the right mattress for them, and 2) giving mattress companies a better way to attract new customers.

We’re sharing this roadmap with you in the hopes of engaging you in our vision.  We want you to know what things we’re focused on, and what to expect from us in the future.  By the same token, we hope you’ll offer us your input and support along the way.  Together, we can make mattress shopping (and mattress advertising) so much better!!

Please reach out to us — either in the comments or otherwise — to let us hear your comments, questions, compliments or concerns!