Having the right products and the right prices in your retail stores is not always enough to make sure that your business is going to succeed. There are other factors at play, and it has become more important than ever to create a retail experience for your customers that makes people want to stay in the store and shop. Given the fact that so many people today are shopping online, brick-and-mortar retail stores need to provide reasons for the customers to visit their store.
It is important to understand how customers are interacting with your retail shop, and one of the best ways to measure this is through dwell time. This metric will let you know how long customers are in the store and how long they stay in certain areas of the store, for example. Dwell time helps to determine just how engaged the customers are with the products that they are looking at in the store. The customers are generally looking at items that interest them, and if they are presented well and have the features the customer needs, they are more likely to buy.
Studies have shown that by increasing the dwell time by just 1%, it can increase average sales by 1.3%. The same is true for restaurants, not just retail stores. Fortunately, there are several things that you can do for your retail store that will help to increase dwell time and improve the chance of making even greater sales.
Quality Signage and Displays to Make It Easy to Find the Right Products
Customers do not like coming into a store without being able to quickly and easily survey the area to see where the various sections are located. Most customers have an idea of what they want when they enter the store, and you need to have signage that can point them in the right direction. The quality of the displays and the end caps are important, as well. They should entice the buyer to peruse. Having related products and accessories in the same area as the main products, or that are easy to find, can help to increase dwell time and sales, as well.
High-Quality Service
Service needs to be great from the moment people walk into the store. Friendly greetings are a great start, but it needs to go beyond just a hello. Sales associates should be available to help customers when they have questions about products and when they want to make a purchase. Too many stores have sales staff that seem to vanish as soon as a customer wants to get some help. Those customers are likely to head to a competitor or buy online instead.
A Clean and Orderly Store
No one likes to be in a store that is not well organized or with items on the floor. People don't like being in a dirty store either. It's important to take pride in the presentation of the store if you want customers to return and to make purchases.
The Right Products and the Right Price
Although the right products and a reasonable price aren't the only things you need in your store to increase dwell time and sales, they are important. Do your best to keep prices in line with your competitors and make sure that you are stocking the items that have the best chance of selling.
Fast Check-out Time
Customers do not want to spend a long time waiting to go through a queue so that they can buy the products. They understand that there may be a line, of course, but you must move customers quickly through the lines. People like the convenience of shopping online because there are no lines. You need to do your best to eliminate wait time in the store if you hope for return customers.
FastSensor Helps to Eliminate the Challenge of Tracking Dwell Time
FastSensor is a platform that can provide retail shops with reliable and easy to understand measurements of dwell time and what the shoppers are doing in stores. The platform can even be used across stores or groups of stores, so you can get a better comparison between different retail shops that you are running. This can indicate where some stores are doing well and where other stores might want to make changes. The platform’s measurement capabilities can help to get a better handle on the various marketing tactics that you are using, as well, such as your storefront ads, end caps, and merchandising displays.
The information is detailed and easy to understand and can provide retail stores to make changes that can help to improve the customer experience and increase sales. You will have a better grasp on how to make changes and refinements to the store to help it succeed.
The platform works by gathering non-personal, anonymous signals from the customers’ devices, such as their smartphones. This allows the FastSensor platform to create heat maps and other metrics that show how long customers are in a store and the areas they engage within the shop. The system can provide details and measurements on how customers are flowing through a retail store, how long they stay when they arrive, and how often they return to the store.
It can also measure their dwell time not only in the store but in certain areas of the store. This can let the retailer know what sections of the store are getting it right and what displays might be overlooked. One of the best features of FastSensor is its ability to provide a unified and instant view of the customers in the store and across the chain of stores, all in real-time. This allows for faster actions to make changes that are needed.
As you can see, there are some stellar ways to increase dwell time in the retail store, as well as to track customer behavior. Retailers that are not thinking about ways to make improvements to their dwell time and who are not taking action are not going to be as successful as they might hope. Use FastSensor to get a better understanding of what needs to be done to make your store the best it can be.