With the advent of the internet came online shopping. When this happened, many thought that brick n’ mortar stores would go out of business.
They were wrong.
Online stores didn’t wipe out offline stores. And you know why? Because a lot of people still love the feel of shopping by themselves rather than on a computer screen.
People still love to interact with other humans. They love the attention, the feel of the products in their hands; they love to try out the product physically.
And so, as it is, in-store shopping isn’t going away anytime soon. But thanks to technology, it is getting better.
In this article, I have put together 5 innovation ideas to make shopping at your store easy, attractive, and efficient.
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Use Augmented Reality
I know what you are thinking, ‘Augmented reality? Isn’t that a bit much or too far-fetched?’
As crazy as this sounds, augmented reality is the next level in in-store shopping. Augmented reality blends what you see with your eyes in real life with data so that you see both at the same time. The data could be images, figures (text), etc.
Augmented reality is quite engaging and there are a lot of people who would be willing to shop with it. With augmented reality, you can give your customers a fore-taste of what your product will look like when they buy it.
For instance, you can let your customers see how a wristwatch would look like on their wrist without them buying it.
Augmented reality is immersive. Your customers can ‘try on’ your products to see how it feels without being pressures to buy. But at the same time, the immersive experience they get from the augmented reality can drive them to buy eventually.
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Employ Interactivity
Interactivity makes shopping in your store a delight to your customers. They engage your customers and give them a little something to look at or interact with while they shop. Interactivity can be used for digital storytelling, or for an inventory display.
An idea for interactivity can be to install a vending machine with products that are catchy. But more importantly, it makes it more interesting than just placing the products on a shelf.
Basically, in-store interactive additions help to serve, inform, and engage customers.
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Get Rid Of Checkouts
Wait, hold up, I know what you are thinking. I’m not saying your customers won’t pay for your products when shopping at your store. We all know that most queues you find in stores happen at the checkout point.
Your customers hate the queue, whether they say it or not. They hate that they have to wait in line to part with their money. Therefore, if you get rid of the checkout point, you will improve your customer experience dramatically.
How can you do this?
You can allow your customers pay using an app that deducts the money from their bank account after their purchase. Or they could make a monthly subscription to your store if they spend a certain amount of money monthly.
You don’t have to take any of these ideas. There are quite a few payment channels you can adopt to help get rid of checkouts. Bottom line is, get an alternative payment method for your customers.
They will thank you for it.
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Virtual Reality
Have you ever had to wait in a clothing store to use the fitting room? It can get pretty irksome. Sometimes there are just so many people waiting, it takes the fun out of shopping.
But there is a better way.
Smart retailers are using virtual reality to solve this problem.
How?
By creating virtual changing or fitting rooms. Yes, you read that correctly – virtual changing/fitting rooms.
Virtual fitting rooms help the customers see how the items look and fit without actually buying it first. So that when they do buy, there is reduced risk of returning the item(s). Virtual changing rooms make your fitting room plan or system more efficient.
And like the previous point, this will help eliminate long queues and improve customer shopping experience.
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Get A System That Tracks Offline And Online History
You may run an offline store but that shouldn’t stop you from using the internet to improve shopping experience.
Some customers may want to check to see if a certain item is available before visiting your store to shop. To make this easy, you can build a platform online that would help notify customers when a certain item is in stock.
This could also be installed as an in-store terminal where customers can go to check availability. And when the item is available, they get a push notification through email which you can collect using Wi-Fi marketing platform.
In the same vein, you can design a mobile app for this purpose. Customers can get push notifications for items that were previously look at but weren’t previously in stock.
Furthermore, using Wi-Fi perimeter sensors, you can send customers an alert for certain products that you think the customers may be interested in. Or items that compliment what the customer just purchased.
Doing this will urge customers to make impulse or last-minute purchases and ultimately improve sales.
Finally…
As you can already see, these innovations will help improve customer experience by reducing dwell time and tedious payment systems. You will see your sales increase as customers reward your efficiency with repeat business.
Therefore, take some time to consider putting a couple (or all) of these ideas to work in your store in 2020.
As a matter of fact, to get some of these ideas to work perfectly, you need customer data. And to get that, you need to integrate a Wi-Fi marketing and analytics to your social Wi-Fi system.
That’s where our product comes in. Spotonwifi is a robust Wi-Fi marketing and analytics platform that can help you gather all the in-store customer data you need.
We will be happy to give more information. All you need to do is contact us and we will get you started.
POSTED ON December 20, 2019