Modern retailers face many challenges. Especially those that rely on passersby coming into their store to buy. Even if they also have an online store, business owners still need to sell enough products to cover the cost of running their physical outlets.
They need ways to boost their sales to achieve this and make their business as a whole more profitable. Catching the eye of as many people as possible and tempting them in to browse and hopefully buy is the first step in the process of achieving that.
Tap into the power of digital sandwich boards
One of the most effective ways to do that is to deploy digital sandwich boards. They can be seen from a long way off and because they are on the street in front of a store are very much in the eye line of passersby.
Tailor what you advertise to the time of the day
The fact that you can change what is being displayed on a digital sandwich board or window display multiple times throughout the day is a powerful benefit. If you are a café, in the morning you can run a takeaway coffee and breakfast promotion to tempt people on their way to work. When that rush is over you can switch the offer to suit pensioners who often shop mid-morning. Then change it again for the lunchtime crowd. Switching to a soft drink and snack offer to appeal to school kids on their way home. Ending the day with a takeaway meal offers to catch the eye of people who are returning from work and do not fancy cooking when they get home. For example, a wrap, green salad, salsa, and potato salad offer will sell extremely well at the end of a sultry, baking hot day.
Periodically review whether your store is in the right location
Of course, the above is only a part of the equation. If a store, café, gym, salon, or clinic is located in the wrong place no matter what you do to increase sales you won´t have much impact. This fact is demonstrated by a study published in Retail Week, which you can read about here.
Every retailer should periodically review footfall levels to ensure that their store is still located in the right place. People´s shopping habits and daily routines change. To demonstrate this let´s look at an example.
Prior to the Covid crisis, footfall in UK shopping centres was still relatively strong. When the pandemic struck those numbers plummeted. Lockdowns meant that people were not allowed to go out. But what is surprising is that they have not recovered since. According to data provided by Statistica footfall levels in shopping centres are still 30% lower than they were pre-pandemic.
For some businesses that means that running physical stores is no longer viable. In some cases, it would be better for them to open an outlet in an indoor market or sell only online. Those retailers that regularly monitor footfall would know this much sooner than one that did not do so.
Review your opening times
When analyzing footfall be sure to do it outside of the times that your store is open too. Doing this will help you to understand whether you need to change when you open. For example, if there is nobody on your street until 10 am there is no point in opening before then.
If on the other hand people who are likely to pop in and buy something pass your shop at 7 am on their way to the train station, opening early could be a good idea.
Use footfall analysis to see if your promotions are working
Footfall analysis can also help you to understand whether the promotions you are running on your sandwich board digital signs are working or not. The best digital signage for retail has the ability to keep track of what times of the day each promotional advert was displayed. This enables you to tie this back to how many people entered your store during that time. If a lot came in that could be an indication that the advert worked well. But add in the footfall statistics for that period and the picture becomes even clearer. It enables you to determine whether the uplift in people coming into your store during a certain promotion was partly because there were just more passersby in the vicinity of your store.
The above covers the simplest and most effective ways to attract more customers into your physical retail outlets. There are other more complicated and costly options, but if you would like to read about them, just click here.
