Creating The Perfect Atmosphere In Your Retail Store

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In a competitive shopping market it is vital to your business not only to attract customers, but to keep them coming back. Lets face it, no one is being mandated to spend money in your store. However, by creating the right atmosphere you will be able to ensure that your customers will keep coming back, hopefully with friends. Here are a few tips for achieving that irresistible atmosphere for your store.

Create Your Stores Identity

First and foremost you need to determine your stores personality and the clientele you are trying to attract. People like places with a distinct style that appeals to them. Imagine your ideal customer, what would they like? Would they like to shop somewhere eclectic and funky or somewhere sleek and modern? Once you pinpoint the type of personality you would like to give your store you can move on to building that perfect atmosphere.

Its All In the Details

After you have decided on the feel that youd like your store to have its important to select fixtures and details that speak to that aesthetic. Investing in key pieces such as furniture, lighting and wall color that reflect your stores style will not go unnoticed by your customers. If you are trying to achieve an artsy and trendy space, go with vibrant colors on the walls like a bright green or blue. Pair that with vintage furniture and eclectic details like an oddly shaped mirror or pictures and paintings with unique frames. Unexpected details like a shag floor rug or mis-matched shelving is sure to draw in a funky crowd! If your ideal store is more modern and upscale, opt for strong, solid colors on the walls like a deep red or cool steely grey. Sleek furniture with clean lines and bold details like a striking light fixture or brushed chrome flower decanters will likely attract the crowd you are aiming for. Putting in the time to pay attention to the little details as well as picking out the perfect fixtures will speak volumes to your customers and will make them want to come back.

Sounds for Success

Just like the look of your store, the sound coming out of it can do just as much to attract or repel customers. If you are going to play music, keep it at a volume that is reasonable. Who wants to shop somewhere that they feel the need to wear earplugs? Also, consider the type of music that your target demographic wants to listen to. Older and more sophisticated clientele will appreciate soft rock and easy going jazz. Whereas a younger and more fun-loving crowd will be drawn to chart topping hits and funky indie music picks. Always keep your customers desires in mind when making your music selections.

The Face Of Your Store

No matter all of the elements you incorporate into your business, the key factor to its success is its staff. They are the face of your store! It goes without saying that your employees should be well trained and customer service oriented. Take into consideration the image that you want them to project. Uniforms are not necessarily required, but it is wise to enforce a strict dress code. You dont want your employees inappropriate dress to be what stands out in your store.
As you begin the process of creating the perfect atmosphere in your store, remember to stay true to your vision. You will know you are done when everything in your store seems to feel just right. Pay attention to the feedback from your customers in case there are any major adjustments that need to be made, or anything that definitely seems to be working. Working to maintain the atmosphere that is most appealing to your customer base will help to ensure your businesss success.

Using air conditioning effectively in shops and retail outlets

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With temperatures already soaring in the UK, many shops and retailers will be wondering whether we are in store for another summer of 06. This renowned year saw recorded temperatures as high as 97.7oF in Wisley, Surrey and the two month period during June and July has gone down on record as the hottest summer since records began over 200 years ago.

If New York is anything of an example to the rest of the world, then retailers can benefit from periods of excessive heat, as consumers seek creative ways to escape the temperatures and resort to some retail therapy on their local high street and out of town retail parks.

And therein lies the issue. Consumers now expect to enjoy their shopping experiences in cool environments and in particular, the air curtain was designed to keep cool air in the stores and dowse the shopper in a refreshing wave as they enter a store.

However, it is estimated that the UKs high street stores waste 300million a year in energy costs to keep shoppers cool in summer and warm in winter, so how can retail bosses align this excessive waste with the demands of their consumers? Perhaps we can learn from our counterparts over the pond, given that they deal with a heat wave on an annual basis?

1. Have your existing, in-built air conditioning serviced well ahead of summer to make sure it is running efficiently. And if you are concerned about any mini-heat waves during downtime, then consider hiring portable air conditioning to cover the intervening period.

2. Have an emergency back-up plan in place if your air conditioning breaks down. Portable air conditioning companies can supply units that replicate the existing system and they will be able to act most efficiently if you put a contingency plan in place before an emergency strikes.

3. Plan ahead for busy periods within the retail outlet: if you are planning a sale, a new range or something similar you may choose to hire in portable air conditioning as extra capacity for key areas of the store, such as the changing rooms and till areas etc.

4. It is also common sense to have a contingency plan in place if temperatures spiral so high that your shop or retail outlet requires additional air conditioning.

5. When your air conditioning is in use – make sure you use it effectively by keeping doors and windows closed. It is a retail myth that propping the doors open may entice more consumers in to a shop. In fact New York has passed legislation actually banning many stores from leaving their doors open during the summer months. This not only helps reduce your carbon footprint and greenhouse emissions but will also reduce your energy bill. It has been estimated that stores that leave doors open waste around 20-25% of the air conditioning they produce.

6. Set the thermostat to a reasonable temperature. The Carbon Trust recommends that buildings do not need to dip below a temperature of 24 degrees Celsius but in the summer of 2010, some outlets were found to set their indoor temperature as much as 8 degrees less than outside, which is unnecessary.

7. Talk to employees about the most suitable temperature in your shop or retail outlet. If they are forced in to wearing their winter woollies to work during the summer months, then the air conditioning settings need a rethink.

When a heat wave hits, it can be tempting to hire the largest available air conditioning unit. However, it is always worth seeking guidance on the type and size of system for individual circumstances to both maximise the effective removal of hot air and avoid unnecessary operating costs. In particular, within a retail setting, it is necessary to consider the health and safety aspects of hiring portable air conditioning to ensure there is a suitable location away from the main areas of highest footfall.

Whilst some shoppers may momentarily appear to enjoy being engulfed in cool air, increasing numbers of consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious and appreciate the need for shops to exercise restraint when temperatures start to rise.

The Migration to Retail S&OP

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Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) has been considered a best practice in the manufacturing industry for the past 25 years. Initially started as a process to balance demand and supply, retail S&OP has evolved to a more robust Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process that links Strategic Plans, with product portfolio reviews and new product introductions, unconstrained demand plans, supply plans and capabilities, and financial appraisals of the Integrated Business Plans over a planning horizon of 24 months or more.

Significant benefits, both financial and strategic, have been the result of S&OP implementations in the manufacturing sector. However, in the retail sector, S&OP has not been adopted or at least not adopted in what would be defined as Class A Best Practices. This is currently causing the Retail Supply Chain network to remain unpredictable, minimizing some of the benefits a retail supplier would see from S&OP as well as the benefits a retailer would see if it adopted retail S&OP Class A Best Practices.

This article on Retail S&OP will describe recent developments with retail’s migration towards integrated business planning implementations. In detail, we will discuss:

1) Why Retail S&OP?

2) What is Retail S&OP (in detail)?

3) The impact of Retail S&OP on the retailer and the retailer’s suppliers.

The Role of Effective Integrated Business Planning and Communication

Retail S&OP is a step-by-step process that includes monthly reviews, product reviews, and category management. Before it was introduced, however, plans were always kept on the short term horizon, a nightmare for effective planning initiatives. Today, VICS, or Voluntary Inter-industry Commerce Solutions, is a standards body that almost every major corporation, such as Walmart, Lowe’s, and Target, abides by. Before VICS introduced these best practice measures, suppliers were pushed to implement integrated business planning in some form or another into their existing processes – whether they worked or not – in order to reduce costs and encourage in-house efficiency. Essentially, it was to keep up with the competition.

Reciprocation and trust remain vital in keeping the supply chain strong, but these elements have to trickle down to every stepping stone for integrated business planning to work. With VICS heading up retail S&OP initiatives, the process established a more direct approach to integrated business planning, at least two years out, that involved all partners and links in the chain. Information was shared to promote reciprocation. With a more proactive sharing strategy in place, companies using retail S&OP are often more adept at balancing and forecasting supply and demand and product launches, making the entire retail supply chain significantly less reactive and, thereby, saving money for everyone involved.

The product itself benefits from better integrated business planning strategies. In order to decide which new product will in fact be launched or promoted, the merchandising group draws up a monthly review to chart out a course of action. But planning doesn’t stop at the monthly level since many buyers plan well in advance of a year. Clothing purchases can occur eighteen months out; stores change layouts; aisles get wider; and promotional activities are scheduled — this all takes months and manpower to plan. However, if this information is shared in advance, suppliers can plan appropriately.

Some of this shared information comes from various sources, such as the store replenishment group, who indentifies in-store demand. Point of Sale (POS) is another useful retail tool that can scan and record purchases and, therefore, help forecast demand. It’s the responsibility of the warehouse management and logistic transportation group to collaborate to figure out lead time as well as how much inventory should be kept in stock. Routine supply review aggregates this detailed information to ensure there is enough product in the right place at the right time. And, as would be expected, there are significant cost improvements here. Retail S&OP helps avoid supply chain disasters, while keeping necessary merchandise in stock. Too much stock on hand equates to money sitting in limbo, while an extended shelf life requires products to be returned to the manufacturer or, worse, become dated.

The Future of Integrated Business Planning in the Retail Industry

Issues are bound to arise, but any problems should be resolved at the lowest level before being escalated. Potential concerns may center on building new distribution centers, declines in demand, or poor promotions. If questions remain, any financial appraisals can be done by the CFO or executive team, based, of course, on monthly reviews that forecast profit.

Company executives will be looking at the business over the next twenty four months, primarily at the aggregate level, to make sure that the company is going in the right direction. During each strategic meeting, executives will expect retail S&OP to work in this capacity, while hoping to avoid the Bull Whip effect. (In a nutshell, this means if you were to break out the different links in the supply chain and look at each individual product, it would be fairly predictable. If you were to go to different links of supply chain and look at orders between each link, such as supplier to store, the image starts to look like a bull whip, vacillating and unsteady. However, the farther one gets away from the retail store link, the more the bull whip fluctuates up and down.)

You may be wondering what’s next for integrated business planning in retail. Above all, collaboration is the key to success. CPFR(R)(1), or Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment, an industry standard of VICS, helps steady the Bull Whip, eliminating many of the emergencies or issues. Integrated business planning also ensures that fires are extinguished at the source. Just remember that the biggest sin in retail is to disappoint customers with ‘out of stock’ notices – largely preventable with a methodical approach to retail S&OP.

References

1. CPFR(R) is a Registered Trademark of the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Standards (VICS) Association.

How To Benchmark Online Retail Store Conversion Rates

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Your conversion rate, the number of people who make a purchase divided by the number of people who visit your site, is a critically important number to your online retail business. This number is the final arbiter of your success, it combines the results of your traffic generation activity with your website function, content and pricing to determine how many people who get to your site actually buy from you.

Conversion rates vary dramatically from the phenomenally high rates by retailers such as Schwanss 35.2 percent (food seller), and Keurigs 31.3 percent (single cup brew system), to the typical conversion rate for ecommerce of 2 to 3 percent. In this article we have gathered comparison data that you might use to think about your site’s conversion rate.

Top Ten Retailers U.S.

The chart below shows the top ten online retail sites conversion rates in the USA.

Top Ten Online Retail Conversion Rates
WebsiteConversion Rate
Schwans 35.2%
Keurig 31.3%
ProFlowers 26.0%
Vitacost22.5%
Blair 22.4%
DrsFosterSmith.com 22.4%
Woman Within 21.3%
Amway Global 20.5%
Roamans.com 18.7%
Office Depot 17.9%

The top retailers have high name recognition, a known, easy to understand product and as you will see if you visit these websites, an easy to use website.

Conversion Rate by Website Type U.S.

When you look at how online retail sites do by type of site, catalog sites are consistently better performers than any other type.

WebsiteConversion Rate
Catalog5.8%
Software3.9%
Fashion and Apparel2.3%
Specialty1.7%
Electronics0.50%
Outdoor and Sports0.40%

Among catalog sites, there are some real winners and obviously enough low conversion rate sites to bring the average rate down.

Top Catalog Site Conversion Rates U.S.

Type of site Conversion rate
Lane Bryant Catalog24.7%
QVC16.7%
Oriental Trading Company15.2%
Blair.com14.5%
Jessicalondon13.7%
Symantec13.5%
Roamans 13.5%
The Sportsmans Guide12.2%
Christianbook.com11.9%
Lillian Vernon11.8%

If you operate a catalog site, these are the retailers to learn from. Take a moment to go to these websites and put yourself through the customer experience, looking for strategies that you can apply on your own site.

U.K . Online Retailers Conversion Data

Core Metrics, a U.K. based web intelligence and analytics group published the information in the table that follows for U.K. online retailers. As you can see, the U.S. and U.K conversion rates are very similar.

Although the changes from 2008 to 2009 are slight, almost all of the movement is in the wrong direction. Average items per order, shopping cart conversion rate and new visitor conversion rate are all down. Shopping cart abandonment is up. The slight increase in the average order value might not be statistically significant.

Mar-09Feb-09% Change
(m/m)Mar-08 % Change
(y/y)
Average Items/Order2.352.321.32%2.52-6.89%
Average Order ValueGBP57.09GBP55.303.24%GBP56.960.22%
Shopping Cart Conversion Rate49.90%47.47%5.12%52.25%-4.50%
Shopping Cart Abandonment50.10%52.53%-4.63%47.75%4.92%
New Visitor Conversion Rate3.04%2.75%10.55%3.27%-7.03%

Core Metrics also provided interesting information about the value of site search capability. Their data shows that when site search is used, which occurs about one third of the time, the conversion rate jumps to nearly eight percent, though the average order value decreases by about GBP15.

This information seems to suggest that when a visitor can search for precisely what they are looking for, they tend to buy less, possibly zeroing in on just the item they are seeking. This kind of data may make you wonder if you want to sacrifice GBP15 for the higher conversion rate.

However, you probably should not draw too many conclusions by comparing the two sets of conversion data because the earlier chart depicts new visitor conversion only, the second chart illustrates overall conversion based on search. It is difficult to know what factors are playing a part in the difference.

Mar-09Feb-09% Change
(m/m)Mar-08 % Change
(y/y)
On-Site Search Session29.67%31.76%-6.58%33.05%-10.23%
On-Site Search Conversion Rate7.59%7.04%7.81%8.60%-11.74%
On-Site Search Average Order ValueGBP42.90GBP40.585.71%GBP43.67-1.78%

On the other hand, it does seem to be true that some impulse buying is lost when the on site search function is utilized. Under the circumstances, the best strategy is to be sure that you have optimized the buying opportunity within the sales strategy and throughout the checkout, e.g., organize search results to bring up best sellers first, place cross sell items on the same page, introduce sales items during the check out process.

Benchmarking is an excellent way to think about your own site. Calculate your own numbers, compare them to the benchmarks and figure out why they are different, where you have an opportunity to improve and how you might do so.

Retail Management Courses- Runway to a Flying Career

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The retail industry has gone through one of its toughest tests in recent times. The global economic slowdown had cut world retail sales by quite some margin. However, the good news about it is that after a year and a half of severe battering, retail sales have picked up. So those interested in working in the retail sector, this is a good time to cash in. With an increase in the number of jobs in the retail industry, joining a retail management course proves to be quite beneficial. However, before joining such a course it is extremely important to be absolutely sure of the credentials of the institute.

One may say that an MBA in retail management may do the trick. While an -MBA’ stamp may look great on your CV, it is an extremely expensive proposition. There are very few B-schools that provide thorough training in just retail management. Most would have retail management as one of the options of specializations that may come after studying a whole year of general stuff. In these cases, a whole lot of knowledge is crammed into the students in a time less than a year. For most such B-schools, one has to pay through the nose to get an admission. And they also give no guarantee that one will actually get a job in the retail sector after completing the course.

A retail management course, on the other hand, is specifically geared toward providing knowledge pertaining only to retail management. These courses come in the form of diplomas. Armed with such a diploma in retail management, one can apply for various positions in the retail sector. Many of these retail management institutes provide placement assistance too. These are less expensive and much more focused in terms of course content.

An educationally designed retail management course will provide training not only in retail but also in related subjects such as in supply chain management, marketing, accounting in retail, electronic retailing merchandise management, sales promotion, public relation, organizational behavior, and brand management. Such retail management courses must also provide practical training in handling customers and in broking real estate deals for procurement of property in order to set up a retail chain. After passing a retail management course successfully, one can certainly hope to work in the publishing industry, music stores, multiplexes, shopping malls, garment industry, processed foods industry, and in various other growing businesses. A glamorous, yet hectic life is guaranteed, not to mention nice pay-packages!

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