Retail Trends

Four ways to prevent customers from leaving your store empty-handed

2 min read

What are the key reasons why shoppers abandon their purchases? Below are 4 key strategies you can implement to improve your conversion rate.

Anticipate the customer’s needs and get your products noticed

If customers can’t find what they need in your store, you may have a problem with product availability or visibility.

If the problem is lack of inventory, try to pay more attention to your inventory management system and reporting. It may be helpful to set reorder points, where your POS or retail management system automatically alerts you when it is time to purchase new merchandise.

Another technique to avoid stockouts is to anticipate your customers’ needs. So, look at seasonal and industry trends and start offering products in line with those trends.

Minimize wait times

If your store’s conversion rate is suffering, be sure to analyze your customers’ checkout experience – making them wait could cost you a lot of sales!

Start by looking at your data, your store’s peak hours and make sure you always have the optimum staff levels on the floor to meet customers’ needs.

Understaffing leads to fewer employees at the checkout counter, which could lengthen wait times.

If you already have a fair number of employees in the store, but you still keep customers waiting, you could have defficiencies in technology.

Are your POS terminals slow and clunky? If so, it may be time to invest in a new POS system.

Equip your team with a fast, flexible POS solution that allows associates to handle transactions intuitively, quickly and with just a few clicks.

Give all your customers personalized attention

Although surveys show that 39.1% of customers leave a store because of poor customer service, many retailers are still underperforming when it comes to customer service.

Problems with customer service can be manifested by poor product knowledge or lack of personalization of the shopping experience.

To remedy this situation, it is important to set standards for how associates should treat customers in the store and ensure that team members are meeting those expectations.

So customer service training is a big issue if you want to deliver a personalized experience for each of your customers.

Deliver a consistent experience across both physical and digital channels.

Today, eCommerce, mobile devices and social media are a significant part of any small store’s shopping experience.

Therefore, having a consistent presence across the different channels should be part of your sales strategies.

When we talk about consistency, we mean conveying the same information across all channels. For example, if you are running a promotion, it is best to allow customers to redeem discounts on multiple channels, unless you have a very good reason to run a channel-exclusive offer.

When your physical and digital channels are connected, it’s much easier to synchronize product details and pricing across the board, which means you won’t have to deal with inconsistencies in the shopping experience.

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Whatever the reason your customers are leaving your stores empty-handed, Openbravo has a solution. From just the POS, OMS or WMS, to a complete implementation. To learn more, visit our website.