We’ve come to the conclusion now that consumers like to shop online, 95% of consumers in fact. So if you have begun leveraging your physical store with online sales welcome to the omnichannel club! Here is what you need to know to make your omnichannel program a success in your stores to delight customers and receive repeat purchases.
Customers Buy More Once in Store
Nearly 50% of the time consumers that buy online and pickup in store made additional purchases once in store. In the event the customer’s first experience was met with satisfaction customers make purchases 27% of the time on returns & exchanges. Leveraging the tips in this article are critical to substantially increasing revenue from these customers as your assortment in store is critical to capturing these additional sales.
Carry a Complimentary Assortment
If you are partnering with one of your vendors in omnichannel eCommerce you may want to stock accessories from that brand. For example, if a bicycle manufacturer sends sales to your store you may want to carry accessories for those bikes that are the top sellers. A strong vendor partner will give you an indication of what to stock that pair well with their core products. Even if the customer does not buy upon pickup, at least pointing out that the accessories are available will trigger a mental note they should come back to your store if the need for ancillary products for their purchase arises.
Train Your Staff
Retail is all about experiences and that includes the process once in store for fulfilling the customers order. Ensure your staff are up to speed with how to utilize the software to close out orders and that as orders come in your team members pull the inventory from the store to prevent selling it to another customer by mistake. Think about it from the consumers standpoint. If he or she buys an orange jacket from store inventory, that jacket could be gone by the time you go to pull it. Going through mock sales scenarios of how to upsell consumers gently on other products they might be interested to go along with their purchase is also a great idea.
Designated Pickup Area
Nothing is worse for a consumer than them walking into your store and not knowing how to retrieve their purchase. Make it easy for the consumer by having dedicated signage and/or a counter where consumers can collect their items.
Use an Inventory Management System
Keeping track of inventory with pen and paper becomes cumbersome and prone to error. Using a system where an employee can easily look items up to determine if in stock plus the ability to sync inventory with an online store helps eliminate those errors. To make sure your point of sale is always up to date, frequent inventory counts in store to avoid shrinkage is also highly recommended to present an accurate inventory count.
