Revamping Your Store To Increase Footfall
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With the New Year’s sales finally dying down, we’re coming into the time of year where profits are down across the board. People have spent whatever money they had left over from the holidays, and are now scrambling to refill their savings accounts. So now is the perfect time to interrupt your business and give your store a revamp. Having a store the in physical world comes with all the entrapments of attracting your customers as they walk down the street with flashy signs and intriguing displays. In today’s world, your physical store is almost always going to have to coexist with your e-commerce store and seeing as last year FedEx shipments were up 10% (nearly $200 million) from the year before due to the increase of online shoppers, you would be stupid not to have both. So if you’re going to completely change the way your physical store looks, you are going to have to have a look at your website too, to make sure that they match.
Website
Have a look at your online sales and see if they are higher than your physical ones. There are many times when a store doesn’t have something in stock anymore when the salesperson will go on their site and look it up for you. If the web sales are higher, try and identify why. Is it purely because of access to the web, or is it because your site is more attractive? Are there things that you can get online that you can’t in store? Whatever it is, then try to replicate it within your store. As always, you need to make sure that the virtual is cohesive with the physical. Make sure that they work together and they don’t clash. Use the same color schemes and logos, apply the same advertising images, or the same feel of the image to help everything flow together better.
Marketing
Think about how you can revamp your marketing. From the moment you decide to revamp, you should be telling people. If you have to close the doors for a few days, use advertising to excite customers and to invoke interest. You will find that there are a lot of people who will come into your store just to see what’s different about it. So make sure you capitalize on that by making sure they buy something during their visit. As always with advertising, the aim is to seamlessly attract people to visit both your online store and your physical store. You will have seen many stores that offer a ‘click and collect’ option when shopping online, which saves you money on paying for delivery. It also gets people to go into the store. And quite often you’ll see something else there that you want.
You have to match your level of advertising with the level of revamping – if you’re giving it a lick of paint, a grand reopening might not be in order. If you’re remodeling completely, then sound the fanfare.
Offers
Where you might be used to mid-season sale banners and 50% OFF sale stickers gracing the windows of stores, you now have the chance to do something different. With the January sales coming to an end those sale signs are coming down, meaning that your reopening ones will be there for the world to see. Take advantage and start your advertising early with hanging ceiling signs, and window banners. As we said before, you have to match your advertising to your level of revamping. However, you can still capitalize on a new lick of paint with a reopening sale or offer. If you have a new color scheme, then why not do a 20% off things of that color? This sort of sale will be exclusive to your physical store and so will draw people in. By all means, advertise through email blasts and SMS, stick it all over your social media pages, but if the offer isn’t available online, then it’s not a great idea to advertise it on your website.
Customer Care
With increased footfall, you will need to have your customer service in peak condition. While the store is under construction, gather your team and have a retraining meeting focusing on customer care. Even if your store has a customer care section, every member of staff should be able to help with every query and every complaint. Make sure they all know the answers to frequently asked Q and As and who to direct the customer to if they don’t know the answer.
