Category Archives: Customer Engagement & Business Intelligence

by Ulyana Avetisov

4 Ways to use POS data better with Retail Pro

 

 

More retailers today are recognizing value in the raw data they collect from every transaction and seeing the need to use it more strategically to create a unique customer experience that will boost their bottom line and keep customers coming back for more.

The challenge then becomes knowing which data to single out from the torrent of data you have available: which data should a retail company track which would give direction for marketing efforts and lead to more conversions and repeat sales? And how do you put that data to good use?

Here are 4 ways you can take advantage of data gathered in Retail Pro POS to personalize your customers’ experience and boost your bottom line.

 

1: Collect better data with user-defined fields

 

Relevant data is where data-driven profit begins, and user-defined fields in Retail Pro POS give you flexibility to add the fields for which you want to gather data.

You can start by collecting the basics, like customer names and emails, and put that to good use immediately to personalize your communications.

Or, get more detailed with information like skin tone when you’ve just helped them pick out the perfect face makeup, so your marketing team can make more tailored offers on items like lipstick or blush.

Plus, you can grow your bottom line more efficiently by reaching out to past and repeat customers. This is where collecting emails at the POS really makes a difference.

Retail Pro Prism’s scriptable XML/CSS user interface lets you collect the data you’re interested in to better understand your customers and reach them more effectively.

Because you can entirely reconstruct the POS workflow to reflect your operations, you can create a popup prompting the sales associate to ask the customer for this information, helping you increase the amount of data points you’ll have to analyze.

 

2: Upsell with customer management features

 

Upselling is easier than selling to a customer for the first time and can help a store’s revenue grow faster. It should make customers feel as though they are winning – not as if they are simply shelling out more money. And when they’re winning, you’re winning too.

A quick glance at a shopper’s purchase history (or all those customer details you’ve started collecting!) in Retail Pro can equip your sales associates with the information they need to determine what products your customer would find most interesting and relevant, and make the offer for an upsell when they’re in the store.

Make it clear why you deserve these customers’ business, and why you offer a better value proposition than competitors. Most importantly, let them know how they’ll profit too.

 

3: Report on and analyze all your data for deeper insight on what your customers want

Getting holistic, real-time data in the hands of key decision makers allows them to take immediate action and improve performance in your stores. And when you give customers what they want, they come back for more.

To help you maximize the value of your data, intuitive dashboards and clear graphic visuals in Retail Pro Reporting allow you to summarize performance, analyze results, and explore trends.

Plus, when you integrate all your data sources in Retail Pro Decisions – like data from your database, ERP, CRM, external statistics, Google Analytics, social media, and any other data to which you have access – you can better understand what happened, why, and what’s coming next.

 

4: Integrate POS data with your CRM and personalized marketing platform to build loyalty and boost sales

Analyzing transaction data as a whole, like what customers purchase from you, when and how often, can be more useful for your longer-term marketing efforts, to better segment your shoppers and create personalized email offers based on their purchase history.

Personalized marketing solutions like AppCard for Retail Pro use transactional data from Retail Pro to trigger behavioral-based campaigns and keep shoppers engaged with your store.

It can help identify brand advocates and nurture prospects with AI-driven, highly personalized offers that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers.

Watch our recent webinar: How to Use Loyalty Data NOW to Boost Holiday Sales

By combining those data points, retailers can infer a level of interest and reach out accordingly. Remember, actions can speak louder than words.

 

Proactive retailers are constantly striving to increase visibility into exactly who their customers are, how they’re interacting with your stores, and what they want. And, with Retail Pro, you can collect and act on the data you need to drive more sales.

Want to see how you can put POS data to good use? Request your demo today >

by Ulyana Avetisov

Millennial Shoppers Love Retail Personalization

In a day and age in which “automation” and “self-service” are terms often applied to retail sales, it’s eye opening to learn that millennials seem to prefer an in-person, brick and mortar experience, particularly because this is the first generation that is truly digital.

These young adults spend $600 billion in the United States, according to Accenture.

It’s therefore worthwhile for retailers to understand this group’s unique characteristics and requirements and tap into what they want from the stores they frequent.

Personalization tools can greatly help retailers connect with the millennial shopper, but retailers need to understand these shoppers’ mindset.

1. Millennials come prepared and want sales associates to add value to their research

First, sales associates must offer value to the transaction.

While older shoppers may welcome a friendly sales pitch or having the associate function as a sounding board for potential purchases, millennials are looking for experts and answers to questions.

They’ll often have done their homework online, and having read reviews are coming in-store to “touch and feel” and discuss features and comparable options.

It doesn’t hurt if the retailer makes them feel a little special, as well.

For example, retailers can use intelligent appointment scheduling (IAS) combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize a customer’s upcoming birthday and send a celebratory message in advance with coupons, gift suggestions – or a link to set up a wish list that can be shared with family members.

2. Millennials are on the go, so catch them when they’re on their iPhone (which is always)

Second, millennials rely on mobile devices to compare prices.

While many retailers offer in-store promotions, having mobile scanning capabilities rather than printing out coupons is a must for this age group.

They are also active users of social media and will interact with a brand – but, once again, it should add real, tangible value to the shopper.

Accenture found that millennials view social media relationships with retailers as transactional, and a way to get deals.

Creating positive buzz, and becoming a topic of conversation with this group, is hard work.

3. Millennials expect every experience to be technologically inerrant

Third, millennials want a seamless, integrated experience more than other generations.

The transition from in-store visit to smartphone and back again must be frictionless.

In fact, the entire experience must be seamless: From research phase to delivery to possible return/exchange.

Retailers will need to partner with technology, data, analytics and process specialists to give millennial customers what they want in terms of service.

For instance, a third-party logistics provider can supply same-day delivery services for online purchases as well as a buy-online, pickup in-store program.

Scheduling solutions company TimeTrade conducted a survey and analyzed census data to conclude that retailers lost $150 billion in potential sales in 2016 by failing to provide shoppers with personalized service.

Most interesting is that millennials would pay up to 20% more for better, highly personalized retail experiences.

By investing in personalization, retailers will not only appeal to millennial customers, but they’ll also open the door to others as they become more comfortable with omnichannel retail.

by Ulyana Avetisov

How to use loyalty marketing NOW to boost holiday season profits [Webinar]

 

3 things are clear to retailers:

  1. Most of your sales come from existing customers.
  2. The best way to increase repeat sales is to focus on cultivating customer loyalty.
  3. Success for your loyalty marketing program depends critically on shopper enrollment.

Yet, many retailers are still seeing low numbers in loyalty program enrollment, and more still are faced with problem programs that do very little to alter buying behavior and incentivize future purchases.

On Wednesday, September 12th, join Retail Pro International and AppCard for a live webinar to see how you can start using loyalty marketing techniques now to boost holiday season profits.

  • Why personalized loyalty marketing works
  • How to capitalize on holiday foot traffic to supercharge enrollment
  • Loyalty marketing tactics to increase purchases now and during the holidays
  • How to leverage loyalty data to keep customers coming back

Save your spot now to hear proven marketing tactics to increase program enrollment and how to leverage the shopper data you’ll generate to keep customers coming back after the holidays.

 

 

by Ulyana Avetisov

3 Ways to Improve Your In-Store Experience with Retail Pro

How a customer experiences your brand when they visit your stores is a strong indicator as to whether they will become a repeat customer or leave you for competitors with better service.

Elements of customer experience range from baseline solid replenishment so customers get the products they want, all the way to the heights of experiential retail where they get to test your products in the store – and you can use Retail Pro capabilities to improve each phase.

Here are 3 ways to improve your store experiences with Retail Pro.

1. Give them the goods

First and foremost, shoppers come to you for products.

If you don’t have what they want, shoppers may go for brand alternatives in your store.

Or, they might choose an alternative retailer to meet the need you couldn’t.

We know your team is doing its best to keep shelves and racks stocked with the latest and the best, and Retail Pro can be a strong help in this area.

To help you minimize lost sales due to out of stocks, use replenishment capabilities in Retail Pro.

For every item in your inventory, you can set minimum and maximum quantities.

These quantities specify the minimum and maximum amounts you want to have on hand at any given time.

The Best Replenishment utility allows you to automatically create purchase orders or transfer orders to ensure you have enough stock in each store when your quantities are above or below these numbers.

You can define formulas for different stores, departments, vendors, or styles.

Formulas use sales history records to ensure you have enough stock on hand for the period of time defined by the formula.

The wizard tool in Retail Pro helps you set up formulas quickly and easily.

You can read more about this on the My Retail Pro user portal blog: Automate Inventory Replenishment with Retail Pro® Auto Utilities

2. Show customers they’re worth your time

When you have enough personnel on the sales floor and at the cash wrap, shoppers intuitively get the message that they are worth your time and staff investment.

You can train your sales staff to keep an eye on queue length and whip out Retail Pro POS on a tablet to open up additional check stands so you make sure your customers get a good last impression.

Another way you can show shoppers they’re worth your time is by training your team to actually take time with customers before they get to the POS.

If the Min/Max features failed you or you just sold the last pair of high rise skinny jeans in your customer’s size, your sales associate can use Retail Pro to see if your other locations have those jeans in stock and place an order from the mobile POS.

That way, you can do a stock transfer from another location and the customer can pick up those jeans at your store in a few days.

Or you can place the order from your online store and have it delivered to the customer at her home.

Lyn Evans

Retailer Lyn Evans created that kind of no-disappointment experience for their customers.

Every store is equipped with iPads that show their company website at all times to allow for cross-selling from other stores.

If a customer wants a certain style or color that is not available at their location, a store associate will save the sale by helping the customer place the order from the store’s iPad before they go.

A good customer experience starts with giving your customers what they need without friction or disappointment.

The next step up is to get to know individual customers so you can pinpoint what else they might need and want.

So, while your sales associate is looking up stock availability from Retail Pro on an iPad or iPod Touch (or any other mobile device), they can also look up the customer’s transaction history and make recommendations for cool sweaters or tees to complete their look.

It’s extra little steps like these that show your customers they’re worth your time, and they leave happy.

3. Get Creative

When you’ve got the basics of good inventory management and great customer service in place, you can devote mental energy to creating an immersive, interactive experience in your stores.

And Retail Pro is honored and humbled and grateful to be a part of what awesome retailers like you are doing in your stores.

Oakley

VP of Oakley Retail, Erik Searles, shared with Chain Store Age how Oakley is using technology to draw customers into the brand’s innovation.

Oakley uses digital technology and mobile devices to give customers a more active hand in creating a product personalized to their needs in its new in-store custom and prescription eyewear centers, which are launching in all Oakley stores.

The eyewear is built on the iPad and then right in front of the customer, ready to take home.

Oakley is also utilizing mobile POS to help customers via quick transactions on the spot, rather than having them finish an interaction with an Oakley expert and then go elsewhere to pay.

United Colors of Benetton

Global head of retail design at Benetton, Michele Trevisan, shared with Retail Focus how they’re infusing beauty and color into their retail experience – and how it’s facilitated by the use of modern technology.

“When we started the project, the brief was not just to do another flagship store; the idea was to create a brand amplifier, a place where the customers can become users of the brand’s philosophy, not just simple consumers. Therefore, we decided to use three drivers for the project: attract, explore and inspire.”

Inside the store, two digital applications were created with the intention to simplify the customer’s activity, reducing the waste of time.

The first one is the mobile payment system that, thanks to the use of WiFi tablets and mobile POS, allows an exclusive payment via mobile and card only, potentially everywhere in the store, reducing the time spent in a queue.

The second is represented by three digital interactive tables showcasing content on selected products, on Benetton brand initiatives and, thanks to the use of an integrated RFID antenna, they release technical information about the products that are placed on the table top.

Do something amazing

These are just three ways you can improve your customer experience with Retail Pro.

But retailers like you are creative, visionary people with many idea of how to improve your in-store experience.

Retail Pro is ready to go there with you.

Doing something amazing with your Retail Pro? Tell us about it!

Write in to newsletter@retailpro.com to share how you’ve been improving your customer experience.

Haven’t experienced Retail Pro for yourself yet? Request a demo today.

Images: Oakley, United Colors of Benetton

by Retail Pro

Why Business Analytics is still a top priority in retail

 

Business Intelligence is high on the agendas of modern executives.

At the 2014 Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit, Gartner Analyst Michael Smith reported that a survey of CEOs and Senior Business Executives in North America showed that their two top technology investment focus areas were:

  • Business Analytics (71%)
  • Enhanced Business Reporting (56%)

There can be a number of different factors driving executives to make investments in Business Intelligence, but one main reason stands out.

According to Smith, executives still report a huge gap between the information they need and the information they get.

They get the results — the data that looks into the past without allowing them to understand what in their internal processes and external environment they need to focus on to improve for the future.

The data they get describes what happened.

But it doesn’t predict what will happen.

And it doesn’t prescribe which actions to take.

In most cases, data is already being registered and logged through decentralized transactional systems such as the ERP solution or the CRM, marketing, or warehousing solutions.

Information is managed by each functional area, but it may be siloed and not accessible for executives to understand right away.

And it may not allow for analysis across the diverse transactional solutions within the company.

This requires a dedicated setup that is built for analytics.

But how do you differentiate which data is most valuable for you to use?

 

 

Get Whitepaper

 

This blog is an excerpt from the Retail Pro Decisions whitepaper, From KPIs to Profit: Understanding Your Leading Indicators for Better Retail Results. Get this whitepaper today to read more.

 

Get whitepaper

 

by Ulyana Avetisov

Refining the Retail Experience

The goal of experiential retail is to foster a sense of community in an entertaining setting.

Examples of the experiential retail trend are the increase in outdoor malls referred to as “lifestyle centers” and the emerging trend of mixed-use lifestyle centers.

Sadly, few retailers offer a truly memorable experience.

Apple does, with its merchandise displayed in a customer-friendly manner, basically inviting customers to come in and play.

What differentiates it from competitors is the full complement of staff ready and waiting to answer questions (and sell products).

For those seeking a slightly more special experience, customers can make an appointment for an exclusive one-on-one at the Genius Bar.

Apple customers expect — and receive — a hands-on tech experience that satisfies their needs, whether they stopped in to ask questions, buy some gadgets or get a feel for a particular set of products.

It wasn’t that long ago that industry experts were mumbling about the demise of Best Buy.

Many thought it would go the way of Circuit City, CompUSA and Crazy Eddie.

But, instead, the big box electronics retailer transformed itself during the last six years into a powerful competitor by confronting the challenges of showrooming and e-commerce.

First, Best Buy created an in-store shopping experience in which customers could watch movies on leading-edge TVs, play with the latest gaming consoles and listen to music on high-quality audio equipment.

The retailer gave customers a reason to visit the physical store.

Second, Best Buy’s size meant it can negotiate discounts with suppliers—and pass the savings on to customers.

Best Buy was, therefore, able to offer product pricing comparable to its online competitors.

Combining experience and pricing with instant gratification proved to be a winning solution.

Retailer Topgolf has taken experiential retail to new heights.

The retail chain is planning a three-level building in San Jose, Calif., with 3,000 sq. ft. of private event space and 120 hitting bays.

The company’s newest location offers golfers the opportunity to hit microchipped balls at colorful targets, challenge friends on the World Golf Tour app, follow shots on the range using Toptracer Ranger and view celebrities on the retailer’s original online content.

To be successful, experiential retail must be authentic: It must have a clear tie to the retailer.

In addition, a strong human element is also needed.

It’s not enough to have associates; frequently, shoppers will complain about intrusive employees.

More often than not, however, shoppers welcome friendly and knowledgeable staff — after all, they chose to shop in a physical store rather than online.

What they really want is staff that adds value to the transaction.

Having an associate ready and eager to offer advice and to help them navigate their product choices enhances the overall experience.

by Jennifer Bosavage

How to Create Shopper Personas to Know Who’s Buying from You and How to Sell More

Knowing and understanding customers is key for any retailer’s success.

Successful businesses study their shoppers, learning what they like – which can be as important as figuring out what they don’t like – and using that information to help predict what they’ll buy in the future.

Studying consumer behavior helps retailers determine factors that influence their buying decisions, which allows them to offer products that satisfy their customers’ needs.

If you want to really understand your customers, consider developing buyer personas.

 

  1. Who is your typical buyer?

The answer to this can be one type of person (e.g., a soccer outfitter) or a number of types (e.g., a general sporting goods store).

Using purchase data from your POS, you can discover who your end customers tend to be.

Hopefully, the results won’t be entirely shocking.

 

  1. Look at Their Product Purchases

Next, look at your products and connect the dots to the buyers.

Are your customers buying for themselves or others?

Some stores may find clear evidence that they are a gift-giving destination, while others may find it’s parents rather than teenagers who are doing the buying.

Consider creating a persona not just for the shoppers buying for themselves, but also for the ones buying on behalf of someone else.

At first, you are simply defining your clientele and placing them in large categories.

 

  1. Refine Your Search

The next step is refining your research:

Where do your customers live?

What are their ages?

Gender?

Hobbies?

Education level?

Income level?

Language spoken?

 

 

Some of these distinguishing traits will be more important than others.

Furthermore, there may be additional questions that are particularly relevant to your business.

 

  1. Draw Conclusions

Ultimately, you want to take the answers and compare that to what is being purchased and draw conclusions.

That can be accomplished by gathering reams of data not only from the point of sale terminal but also (potentially) from contest submissions or newsletter subscriptions.

Don’t forget past or inactive customers.

 

  1. Test Your Findings

It’s beneficial to understand why they may have stopped shopping at your business, so pick up the phone, send an email, create a survey – and find out you’re your shortcomings are; whether they are perceived or real they are valuable.

Offer an incentive, such as a coupon code and not only will they be more apt to respond, but they may also give your business a second shot.

 

  1. Tie in Online Data

If you have an e-commerce site in addition to brick and mortar, use tools such as Google Analytics Audience reports to nail down the demographics of online shoppers.

Take it one step further and unite all that data – POS, ecommerce, Google Analytics, and any other retail software you use – into an analytics platform that can help you predict what your customers will do next.

 

Successful retailers know their customers.

They not only know what they are buying and what they want to purchase but also their likes and dislikes outside of the store environment.

They know personal details.

And they’ve analyzed all that information so they can provide a stellar customer experience, not just today but for well into the future.

They know that the day they stop knowing their customer is the day they lose that customer.

by Ulyana Avetisov

Make lasting brand impressions at your mobile POS

 

experiential retail

 

As much as customer engagement strategy differs between brands, one thing is consistent across the board: the POS is still the one thing that never fails to bring sales associate and customer together.

And last impressions matter.

When speed is the goal, it’s critical to establish efficient workflows for your mobile POS that are tailored to your exact process, so you can minimize human error.

If customer data collection is important for your marketing strategy, giving associates a way to record data to your customer’s profile tactfully from the mobile POS screen is invaluable.

When showing customers your full collection on your mobile POS, having a stunning user interface that reflects your brand essence is powerful.

That’s why it’s critical to have mobile POS that you can fully configure to reflect your business needs.

The Retail Pro POS and retail management platform is written in HTML, so your IT team can tailor everything to match your workflows and branding, from the background image and customer data capture at the POS to user-defined touchscreen buttons.

And, with Retail Pro Software Assurance, you get a free lab environment so you can test every optimization before going live.

How would you optimise your UI with flexibility like this?

Roll up your sleeves and start optimizing.
Talk to a Retail Pro Business Partner today to see how.

 

Request a Demo

 

by Retail Pro

What are the Most Important KPIs for Retail?

 

Guest post from our partners at Targit, makers of the analytics methodology behind Retail Pro Decisions business intelligence and visual analytics platform.

 

Retail businesses live and die by their numbers. The success or failure of a business in the crowded and complex marketplace comes down to whether your company can meet goals, effectively control inventory, and maintain sales.

Small changes in strategy can create big impacts in the bottom line and no industry rides the waves of trends more than retail.

Consider the prominent U.S. fashion brand J. Crew. In the early 2000s, J. Crew catapulted into women’s closets across the country with their lower cost take on high fashion. It was as if consumers couldn’t get enough sequins, ruffled collars, or chunky costume jewelry. Until, seemingly overnight, they did.

Today, the company is battling increasingly slumping sales, a hefty debt load, and a shakeup of company leadership that has the retail industry wondering if this is the end of one of the most highly sought after brands as they know it.

Only a comprehensive data-driven strategy can help retail companies respond to changing trends proactively to ensure they stay ahead of the curve and aren’t passed over and left to languish like all that chunky jewelry in the bottom my wife””s jewelry box.

Data isn’t just numbers generated by operations. Rather, it is the underlying rationale behind a company’s entire direction.

Fostering a data-driven environment means monitoring and measuring everything, and scouring that information to determine what’s working and what isn’t. This sounds a lot like drinking from a firehose, and without the right tools in place to translate that data, it can be.

With Retail Pro Decisions, powered by the Targit BI and visual analytics platform, you can converge all disparate databases, software tools, and other data sources into one unified view of your retail business – and analyze the data from every department’s angle based on the key performance indicators (KPIs) important to your strategy.

Determining the most important KPIs for your retail company to monitor is a critical first step on that journey towards data-driven optimization. In other words: what questions do you need to answer?

Think of the data that makes up your business intelligence as consisting of cause and effect factors. Those two factors are leading indicators (cause) and lagging indicators (effect).

According to Gartner, 80 percent of companies around the world only measure their lagging indicators. In other words, they don’t know what impacted their results or what to change to improve going forward. The path to unlocking full insight is in measuring both leading and lagging indicators.

Defining the metrics that matter most to your company strategy prevents information overload and ensures employees are focused on the most critical KPIs.

This important first step is often where we see companies struggle most. Many try to focus on too many different metrics without focusing on those that truly matter.

Additionally, companies’ desire to harness big data is increasing, but most aren’t sure where to start with a big data project.

You can learn more about KPIs in this eBook from Targit: The Metrics that Matter.

Our best advice is to start with your goals or the key results that determine your success. Once you know those, you can work your way back to a strategy by clarifying the activities that have the largest impact on reaching those goals. With the objective in mind, it becomes easier to filter the important data from the not so important.

Some questions to help get you started:

  • How do your chosen vendors and distributors effect turnover rates across your locations?
  • How does each new product introduction effect the sales of existing product lines? Is it the same at every location?
  • Are you keeping more inventory on hand than you need? How can you reduce your inventory requirements?
  • Where are the hiccups in your supply chain? Can you apply what you know about one location’s supply chain to correct problems in another location?
  • Can you more efficiently distribute manpower among your locations?

Questions create questions during this process of determining the right KPIs. Often, answers to one question lead to further questions about why the numbers are what they are. The right analytics platform will help you dig down to the details to reveal the why behind the what.

Monitoring the right KPIs are only the first of several steps in building a data-driven retail organization, but every further step relies on these figures for success. Bad decisions are the direct result of bad data, so choose your KPIs carefully.

Which areas of your business are most critical to your success, and how can a better understanding of the metrics provide better results for your company?

Email in to let us know! newsletter@retailpro.com

by Ulyana Avetisov

Retailers at NRF agree: tech needs to solve real business challenges and improve the experience

 

At NRF 2018: Retail’s Big Show, retail IT leaders shared how they pushed past pitfalls in choosing or creating technologies for the business in a panel on digital transformation.

Scott Emmons of Neiman Marcus testified to greater progress once the Business Ops and IT teams became more intentional about collaboration in the ideation and planning phases.

“We had to break out of that [approach of] sitting around waiting for business to come up with lots of ideas that we couldn’t execute on,” Emmons said.

Cross-departmental communication between the business and IT teams opens the path to creating more efficient and effective solutions to bottlenecks and challenges faced on the sales floor.

Armed with a better internal understanding of needs, retailers can evaluate software solutions to find the best fit, whether an all-in-one solution or best of breed.

Some retailers are looking for a turnkey solution that will enable them to get the job done without much thought and customization.

Others are executing a more complex strategy or have unique business challenges and want best of breed solutions that will enable them to build out their exact strategy.

The ultimate consensus: tech needs to solve real business challenges, and the retail team needs to be clear on the challenges they’re trying to solve.

The more specific your challenge, the more tailored your software must be to meet that need – and the more you need to work closely with your technology partners. Retailers are making technology choices for the long term, choosing technology partners with expertise and flexibility to help them scale.

The Hershey Company’s Brian Kavanagh, senior director of insights driven performance and retail evolution, commented in an NRF session on the importance of tech companies understanding what is unique about each retailer’s brand proposition and how they approach the market.

This conversation made its way back onto the Expo floor, where technology providers, including yours truly, showcased their solutions and met with retailers to hear their needs.

 

 

The Retail Pro executive team

 

 

Retail Pro Prism has a customizable UI to help you show your brand.

 

 

From left: Kevin Connor, Mike Bishop, Ket Venethongkham, Rick Fuentes, Kerry Lemos.

 

Kavanagh reminded audiences of the bottom line for retail technology choices: sales.

“Enhancing the customer experience is important to physical retailers, but more important is converting foot traffic into sales,” he said.

One retail expert pointed out, “Of the 174 million shoppers over the five-day holiday period post-Thanksgiving, the omnichannel shopper spent, on average, $82 more than an online-only shopper and $49 more than an in-store only shopper.”

Findings from NRF’s Consumer View report, discussed in a panel featuring IBM, showed most shoppers (73% for stores, 54% for online) come with purchase intent toward a particular item, rather than just browsing. 58% ranked ease in getting what they need as their top factor for determining where to shop.

 

Source: NRF

 

Levi’s President James ‘JC’ Curleigh spoke to this culmination of technology, experience, and sales in his session at NRF:

Let’s be simple. In a world of difficult decisions picking out your favorite pair of jeans should not be one of them. We need to put you on a simplified course to either keep you in Levi’s or introduce you to Levi’s in a simple way. To deliver that simplicity, we have to take a level of sophistication – in our supply chain, in how we show up in retail, and in productivity solutions so we can continue create that simple frontside of your favorite pair of jeans but delivered in a more sophisticated way than ever before. Simple in the front, sophisticated in the back.

Retailers optimizing their technology to increase shopping convenience across channels are making progress in both customer experience and sales.

 

Experiential retail drives revenue & growth.
Build it with Retail Pro POS.

Learn more >