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In Business & Blogging

Improve the Customer Experience in Your Store

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on
Improve the Customer Experience in Your Store

As online retail is experiencing an uptick in popularity, it is more important than ever for bricks and mortar stores to reaffirm the value they add to the shopping experience. While online retail does provide the convenience of being able to shop at any time and have goods delivered to your door, there are many things that it cannot provide. Many consumers enjoy shopping as a leisure activity. These customers love to wander around stores and enjoy the sensory experience of shopping in-store. You must continue to improve the customer experience in your store. Here are some of the ways in which you can provide the best possible experience for your customers and encourage them to shop with you over and over again:

Improve the Customer Experience in Your Store: Create Aspirational Displays

If you want to encourage add-on purchases and make your customers return to your store, you need to create an aspirational quality in your displays. Retail is about so much more than merely selling products; you also need to sell a lifestyle. Creating appealing product displays is vital to attract passing customers. This will also encourage them to buy something once inside your store. 

Carefully creating your displays by keeping them neat and well-stocked is a must. Your merchandise also needs to be grouped logically, so complementary colours should be placed together, and related items from the range should be displayed close by to encourage add-on sales.

Hassle-Free Transactions

Even if you have the best product displays in the world, customers will soon lose patience if transactions are slow. Customers want a fast and hassle-free experience when paying for their goods. You will need a payment platform that can deliver this seamless experience. Choosing a credit card processing app is an excellent way to ensure that you can take payments from your customers quickly and easily. This will prevent frustrating delays and unhappy customers.

Improve the Customer Experience in Your Store and Offer Excellent Service at All Times

Customers should always be the focus when they enter your store. It can be hard to offer a high level of customer service when you are stressed or busy. However, it is vital to provide all customers with a positive experience. 

Your staff represent your business and are ambassadors for it. Your team needs to understand how to deliver customer service that reflects the values of your company. Providing regular staff training is essential. Encourage your team to continue to prioritise customer service, and to protect your business’ reputation.

Make it Easy to Shop

If you want to provide your customers with the best shopping experience possible, you need to be sure that your store is designed to facilitate this. Making it easy for customers to move around the store without obstructions, and ensuring that goods are placed within their reach will help to make your store easy to shop. The easier it is for your customers to browse your store, the more likely they are to make a purchase.

 

In Business & Blogging

Ready to Grow in 2021 Despite Covid?

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on
Ready to Grow in 2021 Despite Covid?

For many businesses, 2020 has essentially been a wash-out year.  Even if it didn’t actively damage them, it didn’t help their growth either.  This means that 2021 is likely to be a year when entrepreneurs look to make up for lost time.  Lockdown 3.0 is a blow to be sure but I for one am looking at it as one small piece of 2021. Are you ready to grow in 2021? If this sounds like you, here are some points to consider.

How do you want to grow?

There are basically two ways a business can grow.  These are vertically and horizontally.  Vertical growth is about growing within your niche.  Horizontal growth is about expanding your customer base.  Regardless of which approach you intend to take, you will need a robust plan to make it happen.

Ready to Grow in 2021? What are your SEO skills?

Realistically, for most SMEs, working with a reputable SEO company is far more practical than either trying to figure out SEO for yourself or hiring in-house resources.  The main reason for this is that modern SEO isn’t just highly competitive, it’s also fast-moving and increasingly nuanced.  

This means that people who want to succeed at SEO have to keep updating their skills to stay relevant. Few SMEs can afford the sort of investment this takes, especially for a service which is probably something they need rather than something they want. 

What are your social media skills? 

There are basically two ways you can use social media. One is to advertise on it. The other is to build a community on it. Both approaches are valid and many SMEs combine them. 

It is, however, important to recognise that modern social media is only as effective as your skills and budget.  For example, if you’re planning on running adverts, you need to be sure that you’re getting the right message out to the right people for the right price. 

Similarly, you need to take a pragmatic approach to community-building on social media.  Take a lesson from the entertainment industry and allow at least half of your overall content budget for promotion. 

If this leaves you short, then remember that you can do a lot of community-building on social media without actually producing content. Just go on to other people’s threads and chat (respectfully). 

Are You Ready to Grow in 2021? How strong is your infrastructure? 

If you have any issues with your business processes, then you need to address them before you start your push for growth.  Otherwise, you’ll find those minor issues soon turn into major ones as they come up more and more frequently.

Even if you’re generally happy with your business processes, you might still want to take the time to see if there are ways to improve them.  Three areas to look at in particular are automation, delegation and payment processing.

Automation means using software tools to handle basic tasks.  This leaves you free to deal with value-add tasks.  Delegation is handing over value-add tasks to people who are more skilled at them than you.  Getting these right can save you a lot of time, which you can use to focus on growing your business.

On a slightly different note, your payment processing options will determine how much of the sale price of a product or service you get to keep.  If you’re still sticking purely with payment cards and/or ewallets, then now may be the time to review some of the newer alternatives. Ready to grow in 2021? It may mean that small changes are in order to pave the way.

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