Four essential queue busting strategies for Easter weekend

Easter

Just a few days remain until the Easter weekend – one of the biggest spikes in the retail calendar.
The Easter egg market alone is worth £365 million, while many consumers use the public holidays as a time to shop. In fact, according to Experian FootFall, European consumer activity often increases ahead of the weekend and continues into the week after, creating the potential for a two-week surge in spending.

This presents a fantastic opportunity for retail businesses to boost profits, however, it’s not without Download Free Whitepaperits pitfalls. Namely, more shoppers equal busier stores, and therefore place a greater strain on operational resources.

Queuing is a particularly big challenge for retailers, who fear that long wait times will lead to shoppers abandoning their purchases.

To help you control the crowds this Easter weekend, we’ve put together 4 tips for reducing queue lengths during busy trading periods:

1. Predict when your store is likely to reach crisis point
As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. Looking back over previous Easter periods, trading patterns can reveal vital details on when your store is likely to be busy, enabling you to put measures in place – such as increasing workforce – to ensure customer service standards are upheld.
A good retail business intelligence tool is essential for these insights. Although it won’t stop ebbs and flows in consumer traffic, it will prepare your business for the most intense stress moments.

2. Increase your payment points
Many retailers rely on one or two fixed points of sale, so waiting lines can quickly build up during busy moments. Mobile POS technology is a very effective tool for preventing this congestion, as retailers can quickly and easily open up an alternative point of payment when queues begin to lengthen.
Not only that, but the portable nature of mobile payment devices mean retail staff can use them at any point within the store – so shoppers don’t even have to join a queue to make their purchase.

3. Keep an eye on the queue
It’s very easy for a seemingly controlled situation to suddenly become very chaotic at peak trading times; queues can go from 2 or 3 people to 7-10 in the space of a few minutes.
Again, mobile Point of Sale systems can come in very useful here, as dedicated ‘queue buster’ staff can wander up and down the lines processing payment details to quickly get the queue back down to a manageable length.

4. Speed up transactions
Another factor compounding queue times is the length of each customer transaction. While there are a limited number of things you can do to make scanning and packing goods a speedier process, there are ways to decrease payment times.
Promoting contactless payments for low value purchases is a good example. Another is integrating loyalty schemes onto an application for consumers’ mobile phones, so they don’t have to spend minutes searching through their wallet to collect or redeem points.

Six ways to prosper Online retail business

Getting started in setting up a fancy eCommerce store with attractive features can really not start till one gains faith of the browsers to our online portal. eCommerce businesses globally are facing a fierce issue Browse but not buy behavior from online community.eCommerce

To combat abandoned carts, what steps must a Retailer really take??

The only possible way out to this is by gaining trust, which means by gaining the confidence of visitors to your site so that they buy from your online store without any fear. The best possible way through which online retailers (especially pure online retailers – with or without inventory) can gain trust is to “HUMANIZE THE ONLINE STORE”.

Question in focus is how?

It simply refers to making your online store more interactive by providing value added features  which ensure the genuinity of transactions to online shoppers & makes them  believe that they a dealing with are a real business and/or person to automated machine or a piece of junk software.

There are a few strategies that can help you humanize your eCommerce store, which in turn would help you gain trust and build a huge & loyal customer base.

Chat Live: Adding a LIVE CHAT button on an eCommerce website is a method for telling people that their queries will be straightaway answered by the appointed customer support representatives. More often, live chats are text based & one can easily manage resources from their existing Brick & mortar channel without much of  pain

Speak Live… with your customers: Providing a facility for your online shoppers to speak to you or your associates is one of the best ways to humanize online business. Employing Toll-free numbers has been a globally accepted phenomenon to interact with your client & reaffirm that he is doing business at the right place. With Cloud telephony becoming a rage call back forms or click to call functionality too can be conveniently integrated to an eCommerce portal.

Broadcast Live: Videos of product reviews, demos, and so on from your product expert would also add value. … Videos are one of the most effective ways to communicate with the modern mobile, social shopper, it generates curiosity and has been a great medium to generate sales.

Mail Live: Another feature that can help is email forms and email ids provided on your website. It allows people to email instantly to reach you if they have any queries.

Answer Live: Online shoppers are always on the quest for product information, so they ask questions on forums, visit review sites and other authentic sources. Making your staff/product experts available at these places for answering these queries will help shoppers gain trust.

Be Social:  Integrating your online store to the social environment contributes a lot towards humanizing your store. Social media plays a monumental role in brand building; there are numerous tools to publish yourself and network with end users directly. Successful online retailers have used them to track customer preferences & choices and have succeeded in outshining others who didn’t

Expanding scope of Customer Loyalty Programs

At the center of all commerce activities is the customer. The recessionary times of last year has made marketers realize in more ways than many that customer retention and a sizable share of his expenditure is equally important, if not more than going all out to acquire new customers.

Today, Loyalty Programs are a norm even in non-consumer based industries like manufacturing, and non-profit organizations. The need to be closer to the customers, understand their buying pattern and offering customers a value for their money has prompted these diverse industry segments to seriously think and deploy customer retention strategies.

Ensuring customer loyalty, enhancing it and effectively managing it is one of the most crucial factors impacting sales. It is no longer important to have a formal loyalty management application but it is equally imperative to move forward from the short term promotional campaigns to a well defined customer focused, relationship oriented programs.

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