Secrets to Success: How Retailers Can Improve Customer Shopping Experience
Over the past few years, competition among retailers has gotten significantly tougher. Online platforms have joined brick-and-mortar stores, and millions of businesses now populate the retail sector. All these businesses are vying for the attention of a customer base that grows by approximately 4% yearly.
Some years ago, price and product quality were the most significant differentials among brands — however, retailers adjusted over time by reducing their price points and listing similar products. Recent market analyses indicate that customer experience is the new differential in retail. When prospects visit a store and have an enjoyable shopping experience, they are likely to revisit that store and become loyal customers.
A study by a Harvard Business School professor suggests that this decision is mostly subconscious. Many customers are not even aware that they have a favorite brand. Their loyalty forms gradually, and after some time, they find themselves visiting the same store regularly.
Zaltman’s study also suggests that retailers will learn more about customer’s preferences by studying their in-store behavior than through surveys. This is because many customers don’t know what they want when it comes to the shopping experience. However, when they see/experience it, they recognize it.
Identify customer trends and preferences
The first step to improving your customers’ shopping experiences is to identify what they like without asking them. When you know their preferences, you can optimize your store accordingly and boost brand loyalty. Several digital solutions can be used to keep track of visitors’ in-store behavior. Data from these solutions provide analytics that highlights in-store trends and customer preferences.
V-Count’s People Counting technology can be used to identify traffic trends, making it easier to predict when customers and prospects are likely to visit. Our Heatmap technology allows retail stores to plot a digital outline of a customer’s in-store journey. This information can be used to pinpoint how customers move around the store. And V-Count’s Demographic Analysis system can be used to group store visitors based on their ages and gender.
Our technologies make it easier to measure customer behavior and identify trends and preferences. This, in turn, enables retailers to improve their service delivery and improve the customer shopping experience.
Simplify the buying journey
The buying journey describes everything that happens from when a prospect enters your store until they make a purchase and leave. To improve their shopping experience, you need to understand the journey and optimize every step. This means designing your store to make every section easy to find, listing products that will appeal to visitors, and making checkout as clutter-free as possible.
Insights from our heatmap technology can be used to optimize store design/layout. The software outlines how customers move around a store, showing how easy it is for them to find the products they want. Steps can be implemented to improve the layout and ease customers’ journeys.
Product listing may also be optimized with analytics from a demographic analysis system. The software highlights the prevalent demographic of store visitors. If you can identify the gender and age group that most of your prospects belong to, it becomes easier to stock your shelves with products and brands that appeal to them.
Streamline your operations and help visitors save time
Efficiency in service delivery is another way to improve your customers’ shopping experiences. With streamlined operations, when your customers require assistance, they have ready access to an attendant. When they get to the checkout counter, there is a cashier handy to process their purchases. Even if they visit during busy periods, the quality of service they receive doesn’t drop significantly. All these save your customers time, and it boosts their shopping experience.
Analytics from People Counting systems and Queue Management software can be used to streamline operations. With people counters, you can track how many customers your store receives on average and identify the hours they are likely to visit. This information can be used to optimize staffing and improve service delivery.
The queue system can be used to monitor wait lines and congestion in the store. Resolving these helps customers avoid delay, thereby improving their shopping experience.
Provide tailored and intuitive shopping experience
One of the significant advantages of e-commerce websites is how they seem to understand what their customers want. Within a few clicks, people can find exactly what they want. If they buy a TV, the website recommends sound systems. This tailored and intuitive experience makes shopping even more enjoyable.
A similar level of personalization can be achieved at brick-and-mortar stores. All you need is analytics from heatmap software to identify products that customers engage with regularly. The information can be used to delist poor-performing products and declutter your shelves, allowing customers to find what they want with ease.
You may also create upselling opportunities by placing complementary products close to each other. Or cross-sell products that are dissimilar but are in high demand. When customers feel like your store is tailored to suit their preferences, it makes shopping more fun for them.
Bottom Line
Now, it is essential to understand that optimization does not happen overnight. The technologies will provide insight into how visitors behave in your store, tracking prevalent trends and identifying customer preferences. This, in turn, will help you devise and implement changes to improve your customers’ shopping experiences.
Our technologies, as described above, belong to a group of retail analytics solutions. V-Count is the foremost provider of these technologies in the world, and we offer these solutions to retailers worldwide. To learn more about people counting, heatmap, queue management, and demographic analysis technologies visit our website now.
