July 28, 2020 •Elder Ocampo
When it comes to brick-and-mortar retail, it’s no longer enough to rely on time-tested strategies that have served businesses for decades. With online shopping offering convenience and cut-rate pricing, you need to do more to entice shoppers out their front door and into your store. You need to deliver an irresistible experience.
How can you encourage passersby to come in and keep loyal customers coming back? You can start by offering many of the benefits online stores deliver, like easy ordering and free shipping on items that aren’t available in-store, or in-store pickup of items ordered online, for example. You also have to consider, however, remodeling your stores to create a more attractive and user-friendly experience.
Creating a destination in retail means more than providing a merely transactional atmosphere for shopping. You have to give shoppers other reasons to come to your location. Here are just a few strategies to refresh your physical store, improve customer interactions, and create a unique experience that boosts traffic and sales.
Modernize
From a very basic standpoint, you need to modernize every so often to keep your image fresh and appeal to a new crop of consumers, or risk looking woefully outdated. This could include new paint and flooring, new lighting, different layouts, and a whole new vibe that features modern trends in design and décor.
Make sure to flood your social media with progress updates and teases to gain the most traction, or if you’re in the planning stages, get customers involved by running surveys or asking for suggestions to boost engagement.
Increase Lounge Areas…and Reasons to Lounge
Ten or twenty years ago, the concept of creating a “hang out” space in retail stores was unthinkable. Now it seems like shoppers can find a café, or at least comfy seating areas, in all kinds of retail settings, from department stores to grocery markets.
If you want to transform your retail store into a desirable destination, instead of just a place to shop, you need to consider new services, especially in the hospitality vein, that invite customers to linger and provide additional reasons to come in the door in the first place.
Add Technology
One thing that e-commerce has over retail stores is technological convenience, but you can remain competitive. It begins by understanding pain points and finding technological solutions. You’ve probably noticed some retail stores adding self-checkout kiosks or POS options that let shoppers tap and pay with their phones to expedite the purchasing process and reduce wait times in long lines.
Many stores have added price scanners in aisles so shoppers can check pricing before they reach the POS. You could also add tablet stations throughout stores for shoppers to get information about products, check in-store availability, and even order sizes that aren’t in stock at that location (just as they would online).
In Conclusion
With modern décor, lounge opportunities, and new technologies paving the way, you can refresh the retail experience and make your store a destination that shoppers will go out of their way to visit. At S-CUBE, our end-to-end solution lets us deliver high quality store fixtures and retail solutions on time and on budget for retail chains of all sizes and brands nationwide for over 35 years. We’re just only a phone call away, contact us to get started today!