5 Best Retail Success Tips for Your Store

listicle Feb 02, 2021

Retail is a competitive business and you always need to stand above your competitors. Employing the right strategies and investing in the right avenues can boost your sales exponentially.

That being said, the amount of retail advice online is a dime a dozen. So, we’ve taken the time to go through the plethora of advice out there and pick what we thought were the 5 best retail success tips for your store.

Let’s see what you can do to ensure the success of your store.

1. Find the Best Tech Solution

The ever-changing needs of the modern market requires some help from digital tools to effectively navigate. POS software, online retail, cloud-based computing, and other tech-based solutions can vastly improve your store’s chances of success.

However, not every solution is built the same and some might have features or issues that make them unsuited for your needs and budget. As such, picking the right solution is important.

Researching the pros and cons of any tech you want to adopt is undoubtedly important. At the same time, speaking to the dev team to learn more about the product is also useful. You can learn more about what the tech can do from the developers themselves. To this end, developers who are responsive and forthcoming are preferred.

Finding the right POS system, online sales portal, or cloud-based system can save time, floor space, and money when integrated into your store.

2. Connect More with Customers

The modern business environment is very customer-focused. It distances itself from short-term or one-time sales in favor of fostering long-lasting, loyal bonds with them to make them return customers. As such, the quality of your customer service is one of the key areas that can determine the success of your store.

The obvious path forward here is to encourage your staff to be more friendly and helpful to your customers. It helps the customer feel like they are valued and that their needs are being taken care of.

However, this feeling of value can be instilled in them in other ways as well. One of the more popular methods is to use gift cards or loyalty programs. By offering small discounts or offers, your store can encourage customers to come back and spend over a period of time.

Reaching out to the customers via instant messages might also be popular, provided you do it in an unobtrusive way. Holiday greetings, special offer vouchers, and other such festive or promotional material can be sent to them to remind them that you value them.

3. Take Care of Your Staff

The staff you employ are the lifeblood of your store. They are the customer-facing part of your team, while simultaneously handling the backend of running the store.

Satisfied staff do the best work. By providing them with the right tools, training, and benefits, you are investing in the continued profit of your store.

Part of arming them with the right tools relates to our first point in this article about finding the right tech solutions. For instance, letting a good POS system handle tracking inventory and sales frees up your staff to focus on customer service, which relates to our second point.

Giving your staff adequate training also helps bring the best out of them. It prepares them for what their jobs entail, while arming them with the knowledge needed to deal with situations that may arise.

Having an SOP or standard operating procedure written down for each type of work your staff do might seem time consuming, but it is worth it for the time saved training new staff who can step into their new roles much faster.

Having venues to air grievances and discuss solutions can also contribute to loyalty and morale.

Investing in your staff is investing in your store.

4. Find Additional Sales Avenues

Finding additional avenues through which you can reach your customer base has become even more important in this digital age. Whether it is through ecommerce, pop-up stores, or by simply having an online storefront, we are more connected to our customers than ever before.

When setting up ecommerce and mobile websites, services like WooCommerce and Shopify are highly regarded. Instagram also offers shoppable posts, which can reach customers who frequent the very popular social media platform.

There is also the excellent option of in-store pickup for online purchases. Also known as ‘click-and-collect’, it is when any purchase made online must be picked up from your store. This practice allows you to have shops on any number of avenues online and have them all lead the customer to your physical storefront so that you don’t miss any purchase.

5. Improve Inventory Management

One of the biggest sources of errors for a store comes from mismanaging inventory. Issues such as mislabeling products, misrepresenting stock amount, and not keeping up with expiry dates can result in potentially massive losses in profit. As such, your store needs a good inventory system to help manage your stock.

Often, POS systems come with its own inventory management tools. They can keep track of inventory physically and digitally, provided that it is entered in correctly. Luckily, these types of systems often have tools to easily manage large batches of entries into the system so any errors can be corrected.

Additionally, a good inventory management system should also be able to compensate for multiple types of products. For instance, mobile phones are best indexed as individual entries due to their unique codes which makes each product distinct. Alternatively, milk is best indexed in batches so that your staff may know when it is going bad or when it was brought in.

Using digital tools to assist your staff while ensuring that they are taken care of by your business can ensure that they make less mistakes with inventory and are generally more loyal.

There are many ways to run a store, as evidenced by the mountain of advice and tips available online. We picked out some of the tips we thought would serve you best when running your store.

We believe that success and profit can be found best by finding the right digital tools for your store, by focusing on customer service, by taking care of your staff, by finding additional sales avenues, and by managing your inventory better.

If you wanted to check out what we believe the right digital tool for your store is, check out Ewity.

Ewity is our easy-to-use, cloud-based POS system that you can try out for the low price of FREE!

All you need is an internet connection and a web browser.

So, visit our website and sign up for Ewity today.

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