The retail market alone accounts for 10% of India’s GDP. So, the potential for retail is at its peak, more than ever before, with the rise of disposable income, rapid urbanization, etc.
But, retailing does come with its own set of challenges.
There’s a lot that goes into it, from choosing the ideal store location and narrowing down the target audience to budgeting, inventory management, and much more.
Now that you have come all this way to successfully open a retail store, you would face one big riddle in front of you: How to improve sales in a retail store?
Almost every retailer, from startups to established giants, battles with this question. With over 54% of people still preferring to shop offline, you have ample opportunities to attract customers and increase your retail sales.
But how? How do you actually improve sales in retail? This article answers exactly that.
Here, we’ve laid out actionable strategies to help you improve sales of your retail store.
Master How to Improve Sales in Retail Store with 14 Practical Strategies
1. Speed Up the Buying Process
Once customers walk into your store, it should be easy for a customer to complete their desired action, ie, purchase.
If a customer faces any type of slowdown while completing a purchase, it’ll result in negative friction (AKA obstacles).
Common factors that can lead to negative friction are,
- Long checkout lines,
- Out-of-stock inventory,
- Poor customer service,
- Lack of payment options.
If a customer faces any of these, it’ll frustrate the customers and the probability of them abandoning their purchase becomes very high.
To foster a convenient shopping experience, make sure that customers won’t face any obstacle on their way to a purchase.
2. Provide an Exquisite Shopping Experience
Be it a budget or luxury product, a customer won’t walk right in and make a decision on what to buy unless they have hyper-specific requirements.
So, make sure a sales representative is always present to provide a personalized shopping experience based on their needs and wants.
A sales rep’s guidance will result in a quality conversion and improve in sales for your retail business. Additionally, you can utilize the POS system’s data to personalize recommendations even more.
During this consideration phase, ensure your retail store allows customers to breathe by creating an engaging store environment.
To facilitate such an experience, consider having these in your store:
- Dim & soothing lighting,
- Gentle background music,
- Appealing decorative elements,
- Pleasant room temperature & scent.
These could provide a calming & hassle-free shopping experience for your customers while allowing them to focus on their purchase decisions.
3. Build a Strong Online Presence
Though your store is physical, many people tend to look for products, reviews, and stores online before they hit one.
So, If you’re wondering how to improve sales performance in a retail store, create a Google My Business Profile (GMB) to make your store visible to a wider audience.
Add your product offerings, photos of your store, and more in your GMB profile to give a glimpse of what your store has to offer.
Create social media profiles to build an impressive online presence and to keep contact going between you and your customers. Also, don’t forget to market your retail brand, seasonal sales, discounts, etc, on your social media profiles.
4. Utilize Assortment Strategies
No matter how diverse of products you offer, a customer won’t get their hands on it if they can’t find what they’re looking for.
To avoid this, ensure that your store layout is intuitive and that products are categorized in a way that aligns with customer expectations.
Assess your sales data and see which products are being sold the highest. Placing these high-selling products at the forefront along with complimentary products might improve sales in retail even more.
This differs drastically from one store to another based on customer demographics, products, and so on. So, make sure you plan accordingly.
5. Up Selling & Cross Selling
One effective approach to improve retail sales is through upselling and cross-selling. Both strategies can work wonders if done right.
Upselling works best when the higher-priced product you recommend offers more value to the customer than the one they’ve initially chosen.
Cross-selling should be done with complimentary products in mind. For example, a customer who buys a video game console might benefit from purchasing video games and gamepads.
But there’s a fine line between providing value to your customer and simply trying to increase the average order value. To ensure this is done right, train your sales associates to utilize these strategies effectively without going overboard.
6. Appeal to Impulse Spending products
Let’s admit one thing. We all walked into a store to make a single purchase in mind but only to walk out with multiple small purchases. That’s simply called impulse spending.
You can get your customers to buy essential products that are cheap and cost less. These purchases made on a “whim” will add up over time and will improve retail sales in your store eventually.
To make this possible, place these smaller, inexpensive products at the front of the store to catch the eyes of the customers.
Also, place these products in the checkout lines to improve sales further. Brands like Zudio, Reliance Trends, and Max are great examples of this retail marketing strategy.
7. Focus on Experiential Retail Techniques
An interesting study found that over 78% of millennials prefer to shill their money on experiences over products. This is where experiential retail and “retailment” come into play.
Both of these techniques aim to bring a superior shopping experience through the fusion of tech into retail stores or any other experience which are unique to the customers. These should be immersive and a shareable experience for the customers.
For example, the main goal of The Pet People Cafe in Bangalore and Twisty Tails in Chennai is to create a fun and safe environment where customers can bring their pets.
Another example is Uniqlo. They faced a similar question – how to increase sales in their retail clothing stores. One such strategy they’ve implemented is letting their customer choose the embroidery of choice and watch the knitting process in the store itself with their 3d Knit Machine.
These are little but memorable and shareable experiences for the customer. If you could bring in such experience, you can definitely see an improved retail sales.
8. Offer Free Shipping & Return Policy
No one wants to deal with the inconvenience. So, the entire purchasing process should be easy for your customers from the initial stage to the retention phase.
If the cart value is high or the product is something large like furniture, a refrigerator, or any bulky item, offer free shipping for your customers. Ensure that your store provides reliable delivery services, with options for scheduled deliveries to accommodate customer availability
Additionally, a straightforward return policy will build trust and encourage customers to make larger purchases, knowing they can easily return or exchange items if needed. Once your customers gain confidence in your brand, it’ll surely help in improving in-store sales in your retail business.
9. Provide Product Demos, Loyalty Programs & Discounts
Building customer loyalty and repeated purchases can be done through these techniques.
A TV shopper would be attracted to the largest & clearest quality TV in a showroom. Giving a walkthrough of the product asap can help your customer make decisions quicker.
On the other hand, offering loyalty programs, referral programs, and discounts will help in making repeated purchases, thereby improving the sales in your retail store.
Moreover, these will improve customer satisfaction which is invaluable in the long run.
10. Use Digital Signage Effectively
Digital signage is a great way to entice shoppers, boost foot traffic, and increase spend per visit.
Craft compelling, simple, and bold content, and place these signages strategically to maximize their effectiveness.
A storefront digital signage showcasing ongoing offers and discounts can attract more visitors, while digital displays placed at the point of sale can encourage additional purchases.
Additionally, you can use digital signages within the store to highlight new arrivals, feature popular items, or promote limited-time deals.
11. Don’t Offer Too Many Choices
Ever walked into a store and been bombarded with too many choices of products and product variations? This is simply called the paradox of choice.
If you have pricey products like TVs, washing machines, air conditioners, and so on, having choices does help customers (up to a limit that is).
On the contrary, if you’re in fashion, you might not want to have a lot of product and product variations within the same category. This will definitely cause confusion and the customers won’t be sold.
So, assess your target market, and limit or offer your products accordingly to increase retail sales.
12. Engage in PR Activities
Engaging in Public Relations (PR) activities is crucial to building, and maintaining your brand in the retail business. Moreover, an excellent PR move could help in crisis management as well.
To make your retail store appealing to a broader audience, conduct,
- Media & Community events,
- Interactive workshops,
- Product launches,
- Issue newsletter & more.
To boost the number of attendees, provide exclusive offers for event attendees and partner with industry influencers. These not only result in customer engagement and brand credibility but also in increasing sales.
13. Market Your Customer Reviews
As we mentioned earlier, customers nowadays are more likely to go through your store’s reviews, photos, and other resources before they’re convinced.
When people go through these customer testimonials and reviews, people are more inclined to listen and make a purchase decision.
These are essentially, User Generated Content (UGC) that you can utilize for marketing your products and brand as a whole.
Use these UGC on your social media profiles and advertisements to build credibility for your brand. Once your target group understand your business’s credibility, they’d be more willing to try out your store. So, if you’re wondering how to increase in-store sales, this could aid greatly.
14. Track Your Sales Performance
Be it any type of retail store, making data-backed decisions is crucial for improved sales.
By closely looking into the sales performance, you can identify changing consumer preferences and identify areas of improvement. You can then tailor your retail marketing strategies accordingly to boost sales.
You can get insights by monitoring metrics like,
- Foot-traffic,
- Conversion rate,
- Average transaction and other retail KPIs.
Apart from the mentioned, these insights can help optimize your inventory, pricing strategies, product placements and so much more.
How Else You can Improve In-store Sales in Retail?
Let’s be real. No matter how hard you try to improve sales in retail store, there’s always room for improvement.
The reason for the lack of sales could be anything from shopping experience, and market cannibalization to after-sales support and the product offering itself. It just differs wildly from one store to another.
To avoid the mistake of cannibalization and improve sales in retail store, you should choose the best location for your store that has your ideal target audience. Here’s where we could be useful to you.
GeoIQ is a location AI platform that helps you find the ideal location where you can maximize your revenue and eliminate the risk of store closures.
You can sign up for free to analyze your existing store location or the site you’re considering to open a new retail store. Get information on market footfall trends, revenue prediction, total addressable market (TAM), where are your customers coming from, what are the characteristics of your target audience, and much more.
If you believe you do have your store in the best location, implemented the retail sales tips, and still lack sales, there’s nothing wrong with going old-fashioned and asking for feedback from customers.
You can do so with the help of your sales reps, by conducting surveys, or by engaging through your social media profiles. By figuring out the possible strategy or in-store experience gaps, you can definitely witness improved retail sales.
Conclusion
From what we’ve discussed, it’s clear that retailing is hard but not at all an impossible task. So, you can get better at retailing and increase in-store sales in your retail store by implementing the actionable strategies we’ve gone through.
To make sure you stay afloat in the retail business in the long run, always stay abreast of these three things:
- Consumer behavior,
- Market trends &
- Marketing strategies.