10 Practical Tips to Increase Retail Sales

Creating an excellent customer experience is crucial to driving sales to your retail business. You can create a pleasing consumer experience by researching and fulfilling your target audience’s demands. For instance, your business targets Gen Z. Transform you store digitally because their parents raised them with technology.

Numerous factors affect retail sales, such as product quality, price, customer experience (online and in-store), and marketing strategies.

The Best Tips To Grow Your Sales

Before implementing any strategies, make sure your products meet your customers needs. Survey your products and try to find issues that may be driving your potential customers away from your store.

Here are our strategies on how to increase retail sales.

1. Hold Meetings With Your Staff

Remember how a good customer experience is essential to increase retail sales? One of the factors contributing to making it better is your staff. Training is crucial regardless of the number of workers in your retail store.

You can hold weekly or monthly meetings to check whether everyone follows the best practices and give strategies to persuade customers.
Consider teaching retail psychology to your salespeople, so they understand what motivates and demotivates consumers from making a purchase, then imply strategies accordingly.
Making sure your salespeople know the ins and outs of your products will help convince consumers to purchase them. Whenever there’s a new arrival, request the supplier for a product guide so your employees can learn about it.
Prepare your staff to handle situations that may cause hindrances in completing a sale. For instance, a shopper asks for a product, and you’ve run out of it in-store, but it’s available at your warehouse or another branch. You can still complete the purchase by delivering the product to the consumer’s address or requesting them to pick it up later.

2. Think Before Speaking

Retail psychology teaches when and what to speak to encourage consumers to buy from you. It’s time to bring in some retail psychology tips that will help you increase retail sales.

Suppose a customer compares your competitor’s product with yours. The key is never to speak ill of it. You can’t respond with, “but its quality is cheap.” Bad-mouthing competition can turn your customers off. Instead, educate them about the features of your product and how your buyers can benefit from it.

Another thing to remember is to choose your words wisely. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of customers avoid revisiting stores after one bad experience. And 55% may consider going to the competitors. Here are some common communication mistakes that turn off customers and how to avoid them.

A customer asks for something you don’t know about. Instead of “we don’t know,” try “let us search it out for you.”
A buyer gets angry about something. Instead of calming them down, apologize for the inconvenience and listen to their problem.
Suppose a shopper asks for directions to the candy section. Instead of telling them where it is, lead them to their destination.
When a consumer asks to make some modifications, rather than telling them, “we don’t do that,” suggest an alternate solution.
Never straight-up tell your customers they’re wrong even when they are. Try, “we think there has been a misconception.”

Giving your customers the treatment they want helps to increase retail sales drastically.

3. Listen Actively

Image taken from Pexels

Listening actively to your customers’ needs and problems can help you develop efficient solutions to create a good customer service experience. Active listening can be confused with standing silently while the buyer talks. Well, that’s not what it is. Here are some best active listening practices.

Maintain eye contact with the speaker.
Be mentally present.
Avoid planning what to speak next while the shopper is speaking. This will distract you from listening to them.
Nod to give an impression that you’re actively listening.
Do not respond while they’re talking.
Summarize what your customer said to let them know you understand them, then introduce your solution.

4. Allow Testing and Give Demos

A great way to increase retail sales is to set up testing stations. Let’s say you sell kitchen appliances. Set up a counter where consumers can test the device they’re buying. It will help build trust and convert the shopper from a first-time visitor to a loyal customer.

Demos can help you educate people about your products and make them buy items they weren’t planning to. For example, you demo a skincare product that reduces dark circles and eye bags. When your shoppers see how effective it is, they may buy the product and even return it in the future.

5. Use FOMO to Increase Your Sales

FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is a human tendency that makes people do things because they fear missing out on events or something they think may benefit them. How do you use it to increase retail sales?

You have a fewer amount of a specific product left in your inventory. Let people know that you’re running out of it. Or you can stock less quantity of one or two items (can be the ones that are hard to sell), then tell people that it’s present in a limited number. The fear of missing out on its benefits will make them purchase it.

6. Avoid Stocking too Many Varieties of One Product

There are chances you must’ve believed the myth that the more varieties, the better. Let’s debunk it. According to research, too many options can discourage shoppers from buying from you. A retailer showcasing only six kinds of jams is likely to sell more than the other seller showcasing 30 types of jams.

7. Be Active on Social Media

Image taken from Simple Skincare’s Instagram Post

Social media platforms, when used right, can help you drive sales to your retail business. Create a Facebook and Instagram page for your store if you haven’t already. Post engaging material frequently. Your posts can be about your products, ongoing or upcoming sales, events, or new arrivals.

Meme marketing is one of the ideas for creating engaging posts. Use trending meme templates and make them about your store or products. Answering direct messages and comments is essential to increase retail sales because people might reach out to know your store’s location, order items, or inquire about a product.

8. Launch Your Business Online–Create a User-friendly Website

Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website

Creating an online store is one of the most valuable ideas to increase sales in the retail business. It allows you to reach a broader range of audiences and educate potential customers about your brand.

Here’s the thing–your website must appear professional enough to gain people’s trust. Moreover, it may be the first place some people hear about you. You wouldn’t want to leave a wrong impression with poor functionality or a cluttery appearance, would you? That’s why many people trust Strikingly. It is a ridiculously easy-to-use website builder which lets you build a fully functional and gorgeous website.

Image taken from Strikingly

If you want to increase retail sales, try launching your business online with Strikingly’s simple store feature.

Your store’s user experience has a significant effect on your online sales. Strikingly offers numerous features to create an excellent user experience, such as categorizing items and adding a product filter to ease users’ product-searching process. Strikingly also supports accepting payments through multiple methods and adding different shipping methods to your store, enhancing your online shop’s customer experience.

Strikingly allows you to introduce coupons for customers who have shopped from you. This is a great way to convert first-time visitors into frequent buyers.

You can also show customer reviews in your Strikingly store to gain potential customers’ trust. Further, Strikingly’s custom checkout form feature enables you to ask the buyers for additional information that your business requires.

Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website

9. Keep the Trending Products Far at the Back

The layout of your store matters. You must think, “we have to create a good customer experience, then why keep trending products at the back?” Suppose independence day is coming up. People will come to your store to buy stuff related to it. Once they’re at your shop, they won’t leave because all the items they want are stocked at last. While they walk to their target section, they will come across numerous articles. And they might as well buy items they didn’t come for.

Have you ever seen anyone walking out of Target or Walmart with only the one thing they wanted? This is the kind of strategy many Big-name stores implement to increase retail sales.

10. Promote Your Store Online

Remember how social media posts help to increase retail sales? Step it up by running social media ads, and see your page’s engagement skyrocket. Here are some key points to ensure your ads are effective.

Select the target audience wisely. Almost every social media platform asks you for the group of people you’re targeting. You can filter your target audience by job titles, interests, location, age range, gender, etc.
Don’t make your posts cluttery. Keep the design simple.
Ensure the text is readable.
Include a catchy headline and a concise description.
Give only one and clear call to action.
Link the post to your landing page and not the homepage. Many people make this mistake.

Another way to increase retail sales is by sending newsletters. They are a great way to tell your potential and existing customers about your latest products, deals, discounts, and events. Strikingly allows its users to send emails without any hassle.