Holiday shopping accounts for nearly 20% of annual sales for most retail businesses. With the busy season rapidly approaching, retailers need to start making preparations to be ready for the most wonderful time of the year. Yet the core challenge remains: How well is the retail store prepared for a seamless, unified shopping experience across all channels? For most retailers, the key will be leveraging technology to maximize efficiency and customer convenience during the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
Utilizing insights from smaller holiday campaign strategies helps to cultivate a holiday strategy that often ends up producing more successful results. This also helps to shape a more powerful marketing plan as the end-of-year activities approach. For most retailers, the key will be how well the retail store is prepared for a holiday season. Be it a brick-and-mortar store, an ecommerce business or both, here are 7 ways retailers can get ready for this year’s busy season.
Stock up and manage inventory
When preparing for an influx of business, taking stock of your inventory helps track what is selling and what is not. Doing so also provides insight into your customer buying habits. For any retail store, the inventory serves as its backbone. If there is mismanagement of popular products you sell, your customer experience can suffer. Remember, supply and demand go hand in hand.
A retail merchant services tool that can help monitor the popularity of certain products is an inventory management system (IMS) with automated reorder point functionality. This helps break down sales by item and sales category, informing which funds need to be allocated toward certain retail products. The stock alerts feature assists retail businesses in seeing which products/services perform best. It is even more beneficial when it is already connected with your payments system, allowing you to set up and receive low inventory alerts before you run out of stock.
Make your merchandise the shining star
In a sea of holiday sales, making your product and brand stand out amongst the crowd is as important as providing quality merchandise. Keep your retail store top of mind for holiday shopping and influence purchasing by leveraging convenient options like buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS), and curbside pickup to drive foot traffic. Strategically plan product layout and promotions based on sales velocity to maximize average transaction value (ATV).
Offering curbside pickup, online ordering, and pre-order are components of a Unified Commerce strategy, which ensures a seamless shopping experience regardless of where the purchase is initiated.There is a high chance that a previous customer will purchase your product over your competitors due to familiarity and overall customer service experience.
Placing highly sought-after merchandise in a different, open area of the store provides easy and quick access. If you track sales from month to month, you can strategically plan your product layout and promotions to attract and direct customers. This is a great tip to use all year long but especially during the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. Minimize shopper frustration by making the experience easy, achievable, and fun. This can boost your sales and cash flow, which means you’ll get a great return on your investment.
Add an online shopping cart to your website
More consumers are shopping online, and often for products they would normally buy in-store. Creating an online shopping cart that integrates seamlessly with your current website provides your customers with a seamless shopping experience.
Stax lets you seamlessly integrate payment processing into your existing ecommerce shopping cart with a single API connection. Our payment tools connect directly to your online catalog to ensure secure, low-cost transaction processing without additional configuration hassles.
Provide multiple checkout locations in-store
The incorporation of mobile and contactless payment solutions improves the opportunity to provide an expeditious checkout experience for your customers. One way you can do this is by adding mobile payment processing capabilities to your POS system. This prepares your retail store for an influx of foot traffic and provides the flexibility required to add mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) devices allowing your business to process secure EMV (chip) and NFC (contactless) payments with a tablet or smartphone.
Having mobile payment tools that can quickly support the primary checkout area is imperative for effective line-busting. Moreover, setting aside a dedicated area stocked and ready with carryout bags and additional stationery offers a seamless checkout experience to customers completing their holiday shopping.
Speed up checkout time and avoid long lines
Many shoppers will abandon a checkout line without making a purchase after just a few minutes of waiting. Moreover, many shoppers are less likely to return to a store where they experienced long checkout lines. What does this mean? Well, besides the fact that we as consumers are very impatient, the opportunity for quick mobile and online transactions has made our expectations very high for speedy checkout processes.
One way to avoid frustration for your customers and provide a seamless process for your staff is to implement mobile line-busting (mPOS). Deploy mPOS devices to staff members in the queue to process simple transactions or loyalty sign-ups instantly, drastically shortening the wait time and reducing the risk of abandonment.
Make sure your physical and digital stores work together
If you have or are adding an online store, it’s imperative that both the brick-and-mortar location and ecommerce store work seamlessly together. Begin your alignment by focusing on products you can reliably fulfill and track inventory for. Offer products that have the lowest logistical complexity to start. This will allow you to work out any bugs with cross-channel marketing and inventory synchronization.
Next, you should aim to provide a unified customer experience. Make sure your marketing is aligned so that whether they are in-store or shopping online, the customer is being spoken to in one consistent brand voice. Another way to make sure your physical and digital stores work together is by exploring in-store pickup. Allowing customers to pick up orders in-store gives you the chance to sell them other merchandise. While this may seem like an attractive option, it’s not without its challenges. Logistics can be tough. In-store pickup works best when the bulk of your customers live close to your store—like in the same neighborhood.
Use business reviews to your advantage
Ask area and store manager retailers for their feedback on how you could have set them up better and identify the highs and lows of their local execution. Use your customer experience feedback to understand how customers felt. Learn what worked well so you can do it again next year and identify the changes to create more profit next year. Use your lessons wisely.
Manage your business’s Google Reviews right from your Stax dashboard, where you can also view sales performance and revenue analytics. By managing reputation and sales data in one place, you gain holistic business insights and reduce platform switching.
How Stax can help retailers shine this holiday season
The more prepared you are, the smoother and more profitable this holiday season can be. Stax prides itself on providing retailers with unified payment solutions that offer high transaction speeds and transparent, competitive pricing. Reach out to us at Stax today to benefit from our modern payment solutions right away.
Reach out to us at Stax today. We will be happy to answer your questions and help you benefit from our modern payment solutions right away.
Quick FAQs about retailers preparations for holiday season
Q: How can retailers prepare for the busy holiday season?
Retailers can prepare for the busy holiday season by stocking up and managing inventory efficiently, enhancing in-store and online customer experiences, and implementing effective marketing strategies. Utilizing insights from previous holiday campaigns can also help shape a successful strategy.
Q: What are the best practices for managing retail inventory during peak season?
Best practices include utilizing a stock alerts system to monitor inventory levels, forecasting demand accurately, and aligning inventory management strategies with consumer demand to prevent stock-outs and excess stock.
Q: What are the benefits of adding an online shopping cart for retailers?
Adding an online shopping cart can provide customers with a seamless shopping experience, increase sales opportunities, and integrate with existing websites without requiring extensive technical skills. It also supports ecommerce growth by enabling easy online transactions.
Q: How can retail stores speed up checkout times?
Retail stores can speed up checkout times by incorporating mobile and contactless payment solutions, setting up multiple checkout locations, and utilizing mPOS devices to manage peak times efficiently, reducing wait times and improving customer satisfaction.
Q: How can retailers integrate physical and digital stores effectively?
Retailers can integrate physical and digital stores by ensuring a seamless omni-channel experience, aligning marketing strategies across both platforms, and offering services like in-store pickup to enhance customer convenience.
Q: How can business reviews impact retail success?
Business reviews impact retail success by influencing customer trust and purchase decisions. Managing and responding to reviews helps improve business reputation and can lead to increased customer loyalty and sales.
