Selling made-to-measure curtains online forces a business to solve a fundamental ecommerce problem: how to give a customer the confidence to spend hundreds of pounds on a non-refundable, custom-made product they cannot see, feel, or test. Get it wrong, and you leak revenue from customers you have already paid to attract. Get it right, and you build a defensible market position. Terrys Fabrics and Curtains 2go represent two distinct and valid answers to this problem. Terrys builds confidence through deep content and authority, appealing to a research-led buyer. Curtains 2go builds confidence through procedural simplicity, appealing to a results-led buyer.
How do Terrys Fabrics and Curtains 2go make curtains easier to buy online?
Both retailers make curtains easier to buy online by relentlessly focusing on reducing buyer uncertainty, but they do it in opposite ways. Terrys Fabrics provides exhaustive written and video guidance, educating the customer to make an informed choice. This is a content-led approach. Curtains 2go uses a highly streamlined, step-by-step interface that simplifies decisions and removes cognitive load. This is a process-led approach. Both are effective models for de-risking a complex, considered purchase.
Conversion Experience: The Benchmark Scorecard
In our recent study, The UK Home & Interiors Digital Growth Benchmark 2026, we scored 75 UK retailers on their digital maturity. The 'Conversion Experience' pillar assesses how effectively a site turns interest into a sale, focusing on aspects like product information, calculators, guides, and checkout friction. It is the highest-scoring pillar in our benchmark, showing that established retailers know that once a customer is on-site, the experience must be sharp.
92.6 / 100
Average Conversion Experience Score
Across 75 UK Home & Interiors retailers. The median was 94.1, showing the majority perform well here.
This score is an aggregate of 54 distinct criteria, from the quality of product imagery to the clarity of delivery information. You can read the full detail in our benchmark methodology. While we don't publish individual company scores outside of our client work, both Terrys Fabrics and Curtains 2go would perform strongly on this pillar, but for different reasons. They demonstrate two divergent paths to achieving the same commercial goal.
Where Terrys Fabrics Stands Out: Authority and Detail
Terrys Fabrics operates like a specialist retailer that happens to be online. Their strategy is to earn the customer's trust by demonstrating comprehensive knowledge. The journey is rich with content.
- Exhaustive Guides: They offer detailed 'how-to' guides, video tutorials, and articles explaining everything from measuring for different window types to choosing the right curtain heading. This presumes a customer who wants to learn and be educated before they buy.
- Layered Product Information: Product pages provide not just the basics, but also detail on material composition, light-filtering properties, and thermal qualities. It’s more information than many customers might need, but its presence provides reassurance.
- Brand as Expert: The sheer volume of supporting content positions the brand as an authority. This creates a halo effect; if they know this much about curtains, their products must be good. This is a classic strategy for a considered purchase, building trust before asking for the sale.
The commercial bet here is that a more informed customer is a more confident customer, less likely to make a mistake, and therefore less likely to return a product or require costly customer service intervention. The risk is that this detail can feel like work, potentially overwhelming a time-poor buyer who just wants a simple solution.
Where Curtains 2go Stands Out: Simplicity and Speed
Curtains 2go takes the opposite approach. Their entire user experience is engineered to reduce complexity and guide the user to a decision as efficiently as possible. If Terrys is the helpful expert in the shop, Curtains 2go is the slick, modern app on your phone.
- Airtight Measurement Tool: Their made-to-measure interface is the hero of the journey. It's a simple, linear, step-by-step process. Enter measurements, choose a heading, select a lining. Each step is discrete and clear. It removes the 'fear of the blank page' by breaking a complex task into manageable micro-decisions.
- Minimalist Information: Unlike Terrys, the product journey shows only what is necessary at each stage. It avoids long paragraphs of text in favour of icons, simple labels, and progressive disclosure. This reduces cognitive load and accelerates the path to purchase.
- Process as Reassurance: The confidence here comes not from the brand's expertise, but from the perceived infallibility of the tool. The customer trusts that if they follow the simple steps, they will get the right result. The process itself is the guarantee.
The commercial bet is on conversion velocity. By making the process fast and frictionless, they capture the customer who values convenience over comprehensive detail. This is a highly effective model if your traffic is not converting due to complexity. The risk is that over-simplification can lead to customers making choices they don't fully understand, potentially impacting satisfaction.
The Biggest Peer-Relative Gap: AI Discovery
Our benchmark data revealed a stark gap across all retailers, including specialists. While the average score for Conversion Experience was a strong 92.6, the average for AI Discovery was just 40.1. This pillar measures a retailer's readiness for new, AI-driven search patterns like visual search, conversational commerce, and structured data for Large Language Models.
Neither Terrys nor Curtains 2go currently leads in this area. This is the single biggest opportunity for a specialist to gain an advantage. Imagine a user uploading a photo of their room and an AI recommending curtain fabrics that match the colour palette, or a chatbot guiding a user through the measurement process conversationally. The first specialist to solve this will capture a new wave of demand.
Commercial Interpretation: Two Paths to Confidence
The choice between these two strategies has direct commercial consequences. Terrys' authority-led model likely appeals to a customer with a higher lifetime value. This buyer is invested in the category, undertaking a project, and may return for other rooms. They are solving for the 'right' product. Curtains 2go's simplicity-led model likely has a higher conversion rate for first-time visitors. This buyer is looking for a quick, reliable solution to a specific problem. They are solving for 'job done'.
One model invests in content to create an expert customer. The other invests in interface design to make expertise unnecessary. Both are valid ways to build the confidence needed to sell a complex, non-returnable product online.
This isn't just about curtains; it's a strategic choice for any ecommerce business selling a considered purchase, from bespoke furniture to complex electronics. Do you educate the user, or do you guide them? The answer defines your technology investment, your content strategy, and the type of customer you will attract. It's a similar dynamic we observed when comparing fabric specialists in our Jane Clayton vs Just Fabrics analysis.
What We Would Investigate Internally
Our outside-in analysis provides a strategic hypothesis. To validate it, we would need to look at internal data. If we were advising either business, we would ask:
- Journey Analytics: Where do users drop off in the made-to-measure journey? For Terrys, is it on content-heavy pages? For Curtains 2go, is it when a choice requires external knowledge (e.g. 'exact' vs 'recital' fitting)?
- Sample Conversion Rate: What percentage of customers who order samples and swatches go on to place a full order? How does this differ between the two models? A high sample rate with low conversion could signal a confidence gap.
- Customer Service Data: What are the top 3 reasons customers contact support pre-purchase? This is a direct measure of where the digital experience is failing to provide confidence.
- Return & Error Rates: What is the rate of returns or remakes due to customer measurement errors? A high rate would challenge the effectiveness of the chosen guidance model.
What Would Change Our View
Our view is based on the evidence we can see. It would change if internal data proved our assumptions wrong. For example, if Curtains 2go had a very high repeat purchase rate, it would suggest their simplified model does build lasting loyalty, not just transactional sales. Conversely, if Terrys' analytics showed most users ignored their detailed guides and went straight to the product, it would suggest their content investment is less efficient than it appears, serving a niche rather than the majority of their buyers.
See How Your Conversion Experience Compares
Both Terrys Fabrics and Curtains 2go have built strong, defensible positions by mastering the conversion journey for a complex product. They prove that a high score in this area is achievable for specialists, not just giants like John Lewis or IKEA. If you are a commercial leader in a £5m-£50m business, understanding your own performance against the market is the first step to growth. Our benchmark allows you to do just that.
Explore the full results and see how your business stacks up in [The UK Home & Interiors Digital Growth Benchmark 2026](/benchmark).