Partner Article

Optimising Retail Sales Conversion

It may seem obvious to some, but to boost your sales you need to think about what your customer wants to buy and even more importantly, how they want to buy it.

Step into your customers’ shoes and go shopping in your own store, it may sound odd but this will help you organise your space in a way that can improve your shopping experience!

Start at the beginning, as Julie Andrews says, it’s a very good place to start. This is where your customers get their bearings and decide where they want to go.

Step into your shop and take a look around the entrance, browse the products there, is it cluttered?

Think about what you’d want to see when walking into a shop, a fresh bakery, special offers, couture handbags?

Don’t clutter the entrance to your store or shop.

Place a few key products near the entrance, and use lighting and flooring to contrast with outside of the store - to make it more inviting and to make it stand out more compared to other stores.

Once inside the store - one of the most important things you can do is try to understand why people aren’t buying. There are many things that could put a possible customer off purchasing, long queuing lines, trouble finding members of staff, poor merchandising, the list is endless.

So, how does the layout of the shop flow? How do you travel round?

Your products need to be easy to find.

Most customers are browsers which mean they’d rather glance around the shop than work to find the product they’re looking for, if they can’t find their product in one lap of the shop, the chances are it’s not being purchased. It makes sense to place the products you mostly want to sell where the customer is going to see them.

So prioritise your stock, put your most popular items in easy to reach places, no one wants to climb to get their product.

Remember too, the paradox of choice.

If customers have too much to choose from, they are less likely to make a purchase:

“As the variety of snacks, soft drinks, and beers offered at convenience stores increases, for instance, sales volume and customer satisfaction decrease. Moreover, as the number of retirement investment options available to employees increases, the chance that they will choose any decreases” Source

With this in mind, to increase sales and customer satisfaction - Consider putting the most popular products near the checkout or in prominent places.

This is also a good tactic if you run a cafe or a restaurant. Have a “Specials” part to the menu, which lists 5 items - preferably the ones with the highest markup and profits. This helps people to choose and increases the owner’s profit.

Now think about optimising your sales conversion. Is there anything that could stop a customers buying, after they’ve found what they want? Bear in mind things that could make your customers lives easier and things that could make them leave empty handed.

Make it as easy as possible to get information and to make a purchase.

Queues are very British, but not ideal for a good customer experience. Depending on the size and footfall of your shop - why not place quick and easyinteractive kiosks in your shop?

Nordstormgoes one step further, and uses mobile point of sale devices in its stores - meaning that staff can checkout custmers anywhere in the store. New Balance and other stores also use in-store tablets and apps - allowing customers to check sizes and stock whilst in store, or at home using their own phone or tablet.

Whilst you don’t need to completely overhaul your store’s appearance, consider coming up with a rotation of displays to keep it fresh and exciting! This can keep your regulars coming back as it creates the illusion of constant new products. You’re more likely to draw in a passerby when you’re regularly changing your stores look. This may be a good idea for some stores but not others - imagine how frustrated people would get for example - if supermarkets constantly changed their layouts and customers could never find what they wanted!

Crunch any data that you have, and work out when footfall peaks, when sales rise and dip etc. Look at times of the year and times of day to analyse demand. If possible, use social media and customer data.

Look at your staff schedule, are there certain times in the day where your sales take a dip? Aligning your staff resources to when your store is busy can help maximise the chance of turning browsers into buyers. For instance, store traffic can be way up around lunch time, staff lunch breaks can dampen conversion rates. We’re not saying don’t allow your employees to take their entitled breaks but try to work them in to fit around traffic volume.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Evans .