Providing a seamless and easy shopping experience for customers should be near the top of the list for retailers. Having a simple progression from entering a store to selecting products and moving along to the checkout won't dazzle shoppers like a great visual merchandising display or a big sale, but it will provide a positive experience that can be built upon. Making things convenient for shoppers can involve a small investment of time and money during the creation and implementation of a plan, but these efforts will pay off through a happier customer base.
Here are three different components of a seamless shopping experience to consider for your store:
- Price tags: Price tags aren't a new, must-have item, but they're necessary to reduce customer uncertainty and help them decide to make a purchase. They clear up any confusion that a visitor to a store may have about the item they're looking at. Price tags obviously tell customers how much something costs, but they can also be used to provide other important information about products as well. Whether a business uses handwritten tags, a pricing gun, written signs with costs and information or a combination of the three, they'll field fewer questions from customers and help them overcome indecision.
- Baskets: Although not all retailers sell the right kind of products to use shopping baskets, many do. Having baskets available helps shoppers overcome the burden of having to carry their purchases in their hands. These inexpensive tools can encourage visitors to buy more instead of stopping when they can't carry any more merchandise. For businesses that sell large, heavy or unwieldy items, baskets are also a courtesy to customers to help them better manage their choices. The wide variety of colors and materials available means it's easy for a retailer to choose a basket that matches or complements existing decor.
- Size identification tags: Clothing stores can use plastic tags made to fix on display racks and individual hangers as well as stick-on tags to indicate the size of garments. This is a basic consideration, and one that's appreciated by customers as they dig through your inventory to find their size. Having size identification tags in place also reduces work for you and your staff, because it's less likely that visitors to you store will pull apart the neat stacks of folded clothes looking for the size of a piece of clothing.
