Owning your own store is one of the most rewarding business opportunities there is. You have the chance to carefully select the products you sell, display them to look their best, and connect with customers who are trying to find that perfect item. Retail is a challenging world, but it’s also incredibly dynamic and exciting, especially if you truly love the products that you’re selling.
Of course, the biggest challenge in retail is persuading your customers to buy products. Below are techniques that are applicable to physical retail outlets and can be tweaked to work for online stores, all of which should help you improve your sales and ensure your bottom line is always as healthy as can be.
Think about the emotions you evoke
Selling is inherently an emotive experience. People shop with their emotions; they shop to reward themselves, and they shop to cheer themselves up. If you keep this emotional connection in mind, then you can ensure you make the most of the emotional connection customers have when buying.
For physical stores, evoke emotions using fragrance by using the likes of www.aromatechsystems.com. Fragrance can used to make people feel happy when in your store, which in turn is more likely to make them buy. For online stores, think carefully about the colors you use throughout your web design; soothing, calming colors such as mint greens and light blues will help get your potential customers in the right mindset to buy.
Delaying is good
The process prior to a sale being made should be fairly long-winded. In physical stores, this means something as simple as putting the cash register at the back of the store; customers will then have to walk past more items as they go to pay.
In online stores, introduce pages to your online design — such as flash sales — that lengthen the checkout process and give more time to buy something impulsively. There are some great techniques on www.conversionfanatics.com that can help you keep customers viewing your products for longer without running the risk of annoying them.
The importance of context
A product you are selling displayed alone is not powerful; it’s rather stark and basic. If you’re trying to sell a pair of shoes, then a photograph of the shoes on a website, or the shoes themselves on a shelf, isn’t enough. You have to provide context; show the full outfit, show a model walking in the shoes, making it clear how the shoes can work in the real world.
This helps to connect the buyer with what they are looking at; imagine how they will style the shoes (or any other item you are selling). Always provide context to your displays and images to help hook people.
In Conclusion
The techniques above should help you to capture the increase in sales that your business needs to thrive. Why not give them a try and see how big a difference they can make to you?
Great ideas!! I will share this with my gf who does her own etsy site!! I also think that making it personal is SO important!! Ive gotten a lot of thank you’s and/or little add ons that seem so small but mean so much to customers!!
Couldn’t agree more Amber! Glad you liked the post! Happy New Year!
Good Suggestions for Improving Sales – online and Brick & Mortar
Thanks Karen!
Food for thought. I’d love to have my own shop, online and in St Augustine. Just live upstairs.
Good luck to you! Hope it works out!