Techniques Retailers Are Using to Drive Customers In-Store

There are many techniques that retailers use to continue to drive foot traffic into their physical stores. In this article, we share just a few to get you thinking.

Turning a shopping trip into a destination through events
By bringing educational classes, or other experiential elements to your store, you can get customers thinking about a shopping visit as a desirable event outing instead. And as we know, the longer your customer spends in-store, the high probability they have of making a purchase.
For example, Williams-Sonoma offer cooking classes-instore where people can learn how to use products and sample the merchandise. Home Depot offer kids craft and building classes on the first Saturday of every month. And Lululemon has also found success in holding free yoga classes during slow business hours to drive traffic in-store. Classes feature products sold by Lululemon and this increases basket size in the process.

Offer services to complement your products
For retailers whose products require maintenance, offering services for free to in-store customers to encourage people to stop by. For example, Tanzanite Jewelry designs provides in-store services such as jewelry cleaning and battery replacement to help increase traffic and sales. In the cosmetics space, personal stylist consultations or makeovers can help drive shoppers instore. For example, Sephora offers free mini-makeovers where their highly trained make-up artists teach you how to use their products, often leading to not just sales, but repeat purchases by shoppers who are extremely happy with their selection.

Provide personalized recommendations and advice in-store
One of the leading benefits of making purchases in physical retail stores is that your customers get to physically experience the product before making a purchase, as well as access to sales staff who can help with personalized recommendations. Retailers are tapping into this benefit, as well as introducing technologies which can mirror the benefits of online shopping, such as self checkout or sales staff having access to a customer’s past shopping history or preferences before offering advice in-store. All of this is helping bridge the gap between the online purchase experience and the instore shopping experience.