4 Easy Ways to Improve Profitability of Retail Stores
The retail stores are fighting an enormous battle after the pandemic bringing back customers for in-store shopping. Ask a store manager this question, and you will know how much hard work they are putting in to attract customers.
Though the convenience of buying anytime using a smartphone captured the hearts of customers, the experience of shopping in store is still what people crave post-pandemic. If done right, there is great hope for not just business revival but also for increasing productivity and profits in retail stores. A critical research study states that, given a choice, 46% of respondents prefer to shop in person rather than online.
How can a Retail Store Improve its Performance and Profitability?
1) Cross-selling and upselling
Cross-selling and upselling are two powerful techniques retail stores can use to increase sales. By suggesting complementary or higher-priced items to customers, retailers can boost their average order value (AOV) and increase their profits.
The best example of cross-selling is that if a customer is looking at a pair of shoes, the salesperson might offer them a matching belt or purse that looks good and complements their looks and style.
Upselling is the process of suggesting a more expensive version of a product that the customer is interested in. For example, if a customer is looking at a shirt, the salesperson might suggest an expensive shirt made with a unique clothing material treated for protection against sweat, bacteria, and viruses.
Alternatively, they can offer limited edition shirts signed by sports personalities. These sales techniques work effectively only if sales representatives can make the customer see the true value or benefit of the product and reward customers with additional purchases.
2) Segregation & prioritizing
Retail stores can enjoy numerous benefits if they can segregate & prioritize their products based on price, brand, and quality.
Increase visibility of retail products: By properly segregating different categories of products, stores can make it easier for customers to find what they are looking for.
Proven tips to increase product visibility:
- Keep best-selling products at eye level to increase visibility and draw customer attention.
- Another useful technique to achieve high product visibility is tilting products at a 15° slant.
Make stores easier to navigate: They can also improve the organization of their stores, making them more aesthetically pleasing and easier to navigate. The use of navigational stickers on the floor, product category descriptions on every floor entry, and AR navigation can make floors easier to navigate.
Intelligent use of the billing area: By pushing certain products to the front of the store or by putting them in a more visible location, like the billing area, the store can increase sales for those items. You must have noticed things of regular use near the billing area of Shopper’s Stop, Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, and more. This is one great example of using the billing area to its true potential.
Use of ABC analysis: What if your store's most profitable products run out of stock? That's why we recommend an ABC analysis of your supplies.
ABC analysis ranks different categories of products based on demand, cost, and risk data, and inventory managers group products into classes based on those criteria. It helps retail businesses analyze and understand which products or services are most critical to their company's financial success, and manage inventory appropriately.
3) Digitizing manual processes
Retail stores can digitize several day-to-day manual processes, like.
Returns: Processing returns manually can be an extremely cumbersome and time-consuming task. When customers make a return, they want the process to be as simple and quick as possible. Return automation can manage every return with little or no input from human workers.
Ordering a product: Retail businesses can launch an e-commerce website with different products to help customers order online from anywhere, anytime, without physically visiting the retail store. Shipping partners deliver the ordered product to the customer on the same day. It is an excellent way to manage orders automatically and get orders and brand exposure from millions of online customers.
Inventory management: Are you still managing your in-store inventory in books or physical accounts? Retail inventory management ensures retailers don’t suffer from product surpluses or shortages. It will help you know when you will receive products from suppliers, the exact in-store inventory, when you’re running low on products, how to decide when and what to reorder, and how to accurately track products.
4) Adapt the omnichannel way to grow your business
An omnichannel retail approach creates unique and seamless brand experiences for your retail brand that are difficult for the competition to match.
The trending retail strategy assures its customers a never-before-seen shopping experience by empowering them to connect, engage, touch, feel, and shop products on phygital (brick-and-mortar stores + online) channels.
What More can be done with Omnichannel Solutions?
Personalize customers’ shopping: 72% of customers said they expect businesses to recognize them as individuals and know their interests. The Fynd Store OS is accessible to retail store representatives on iPads or tablets.
It can help analyze and predict products for customers using past purchase histories, customer likes, and wish lists. Based on this widely available customer data, they can analyze it, create personalized carts, and share them with loyal customers with a shareable QR code link on WhatsApp, email, Facebook, or Instagram for shopping online.
Integrate with your retail POS:
These are some of the biggest benefits of integrating retail POS with omnichannel.
- Fulfill your customer’s order rapidly.
- Maintain price consistency across channels.
- Manage stocks easily with simpler invoicing, faster checkouts, and secure payments.
Retailers can use mobile POS, a crucial enabler of omnichannel functionality. Retailers can choose to keep the checkout mobile, use the same solution to station your device on a counter, or offer a self-checkout option.
It helps bust the queue and bill customers rapidly, ensuring greater shopping convenience. It is also a great way to speed up checkout and accept contactless payments during EOSS sales.
Eliminate operational challenges: You must have seen a long line of customers in any retail outlet waiting to pay for the purchased products. While they wait patiently in the queue, you can take orders on connected POS devices, redirect them to faster checkouts, and save time for customers and business.
This is possible only if there is a 360-degree view of customer interactions and easy exchange of data between all channels, which is a key to a well-operating omnichannel strategy. Integrating the brand’s inventory, customer data, purchases, and orders in one place using omnichannel also helps you control and optimize business operations.
Reduce inventory with endless aisles: The endless aisle concept is being adapted by an increasing number of retail businesses as a way to reduce inventory and improve customer satisfaction.
The idea is simple: instead of stocking a physical store with products, companies integrate inventory across all stock-points visible to customers and allow them to order what they want when they want it.
Fynd works with some of the biggest retail brands in the industry and helps plan and execute their omnichannel strategies with an endless aisle solution. Woodland, Raymonds, Satya Paul, Mothercare, Emporio Armani, Red Chief, Fila, Pottery Barn, and Vision Express are just a few brands in the league.
Fynd's omnichannel solutions are quick and easy to implement and provide automated integration between brick-and-mortar and online marketplaces. You can, too, transform and make your physical retail store future-ready. Learn more about the omnichannel solutions offered by Fynd here.
Book a demo with us today if you want to take your retail business to the next level. We can help you implement these researched strategies practically and see an immediate improvement in your business bottom line.
