Every successful storefront needs helpful tools to not only assist in drawing customers but also in making the shopping experience simple and painless. We’ve created a list of five tools every modern storefront needs to ensure customer satisfaction and create a great overall experience for your clientele.
1. An Efficient POS System
The point of sale is the most important location in your business. It’s where money and goods and services are exchanged, and also where the biggest opportunity for upsells and add-ons exists.
Your POS system should be secure and fast. Nothing is more discouraging when making a purchase than an unbearably slow credit card machine.
Traditional cash registers and POS systems are slowly taking a backseat to more advanced and streamlined options like mobile POS systems. Companies such as Square POS and Lightspeed offer quick, efficient checkout at your fingertips.
Using a tablet or other smart device, you can complete transactions directly on the sales floor, granting greater flexibility to the work your team does and creating a smooth and faster checkout process for your customers.
This option also cuts down on lines and wait times, and gives the staff more time to offer add-ons and suggest that your customers participate in your survey.
Along with a POS system, you’ll need a system for invoicing. Using an invoice generator, you can create invoices for businesses that are aesthetically pleasing and professionally designed via premade templates.
2. Effective Signage
How you place signs inside and outside your storefront can have a measured effect on foot traffic and sales. Your outside sign doesn’t necessarily have to be similar to its indoor counterparts, but all of them should declare a simple and strong message.
Your outside can contain your logo. This can act as a beacon of sorts among the other storefronts to give your customers an easily recognizable brand symbol they can gravitate towards.
Your inside signs should display a message; whether it be a sale or promotion, a label for a product, or company information.
Signs should be simplistic yet inviting. A sign with too many graphics tends to be visually distracting rather than informative. A sign with too few graphics can seem boring and uninviting.
3. An Attractively Built Website
Nothing says individuality like your own website. Your website can be an engagement point for customer feedback, as well as a point of sale for online inventory. When building a great website for your small business, you’ll want to use the best tools at your disposal.
There are many websites that let you build and customize a site using premade templates and formats. This makes a web developer an option rather than a requirement and gives you a little more flexibility when it comes to customizing your site.
Your site should include an “about the store” or “about us” section, which includes pictures of the interior of your store. Letting potential customers experience the inviting aesthetics of your store’s interior before they decide to visit can ignite curiosity.
A great website can also help direct foot traffic to your store by displaying products and customer reviews. Potential customers will browse your website and be able to find testimonials, product reviews, inventory, and pricing.
4. Anti-Theft Systems
The unfortunate truth is that people steal from retail stores. In fact, inventory shrinkage accounted for over $50 billion in losses in 2016, according to Money Magazine. That’s a lot of stolen inventory.
One of the simplest ways to prevent theft is by installing a camera system to monitor inventory. The only drawback is that you can’t always monitor the cameras, and will often capture theft after the fact.
Sensormatic is one of the top suppliers of anti theft devices; from detection systems to tags and special barcodes. Every modern storefront should have an anti-theft system. It only makes sense when such significant losses have occurred in recent years.
5. Traffic Counters
Measuring your conversion rate, or how many customers enter your store versus how many actually make a purchase is essential to the modern storefront. Conversion determines your busiest times of the day, and how many customers are actually interested in your products.
Traffic counters are basically what your analytics generator is to your website. It tracks how many customers visit per day, and you can use this information to create more efficient scheduling for your team members and decide when the best time is to promote a sale or product.
Some traffic counters actually track in real time, so you can watch first hand how many customers are visiting your store. You’ll be able to make changes to your store based on the path the customer takes through the store to create better potential buying opportunities.
Make Your Storefront Inviting
In addition to the great tools we’ve listed, an important thing to remember is to keep your store tidy and clean, and the inventory organized. Make sure product is stocked in the correct areas, and that any trash or debris that makes its way into the store is promptly disposed of.
Make sure your bathrooms are clean as well. A dirty bathroom is one of the most common complaints in retail, and it gives a poor impression of your company and its staff. Keep restrooms and floors clean.
Make sure your staff is trained to greet customers with a smile and make them feel welcome in your store. Loyal customers return not only for great products but for excellent customer service.
