Ecommerce Merchandising
Article | March 18, 2024
Retailers are rapidly adapting their businesses as covid-19 continues to hinder sales. The most successful are shifting towards online experiential retail.
As a business owner, you’re probably hearing a lot of ways that small businesses can adapt to the changing times.
The most common that we’ve seen are:
Move your store online, or improve your online sales processes.
Offer on-the-go product deals
Shift product focus to hands-on usage and activities.
While these are definitely great starting points, they aren’t really specific to any industry.
We’ll cover different ways you can adapt your retail business using the tools from right within your Erply account. We’ll even cover examples specific to a variety of industries so you can be inspired to change up or improve your covid-19 sales strategies.
The strategy: Adapting your retail business
Retail adaptation can seem overwhelming at first, especially if you’ve never undergone large-scale product changes before.
A good place to start to is to think: what would you want to see in a retailer during the covid-19 shutdown?
Think about yourself as a consumer, not a store owner. Life might be slowing down, but it’s not coming to a standstill — you probably want to find more ways to maintain safe, healthy protocols when shopping for necessities, looking for gifts, or seeking entertainment.
As a retailer, your customers will be looking to you for ways to do all of these, while also minimizing the risk of coming into contact with covid-19.
There are plenty of creative ways to shift your business offerings to fit these fast-changing times. We’ll first give examples of how your existing Erply tools can be used to adapt your business, then will cover industry-specific examples.
Create special deals
Remember, short-term value translates into long-term customer relationships!
Loyalty points
Looking to boost sales without discounting your products? Try offering loyalty points at an increased rate to encourage shopper support during covid-19.
Loyalty programs are a great way to encourage repeat business by incentivizing customers to repeatedly choose your store over competitors in exchange for rewards.
Bundles and assemblies
Product bundles and assemblies can be used to sell items together in a group. Product bundles can be used to sell large items together at a slightly discounted price or to help sell slow-moving inventory.
Think subscription boxes, holiday-themed gift sets, or even items commonly purchased together.
Promotions
Seasonal, event-based, or brand collaborations; there’s never a bad time for a sales promotion! They’re a great way to encourage customer sales by offering enticing product discounts.
Erply’s powerful promotions builder enables you to set up flat discounts, percent discounts, BOGO-type deals, and more.
Price lists
An alternative to promotions, price lists allow you to create highly specific discounts for any sales campaign. Price lists can target specific product groups, store locations, or even customer segments (think VIP pricing).
Coupons
Coupons can offer one-time, redeemable rewards. They tie into promotions, but aren’t available to every customer, only the ones who have a coupon or a coupon code.
Improve customer service
Customer service is more than just employee-to-customer interaction; it also includes accessibility and streamlined shopping.
Buy online, pickup in-store
Offer flexible, health-conscious ways for your customers to purchase products in your store. Our e-commerce options allow customers to buy products online, then purchase them in-store.
Flexible retail tools mean you can offer a variety of pickup order options that suit the needs of you and your customers. Purchases can be paid in full, partially paid, or can be paid once the customer arrives for pickup.
Offline mode for sales anywhere
Covid-19 regulations might mean that you’re not able to sell out of your store as you normally would. Maybe you need to make sales on-the-go or from an outside location.
Erply’s offline POS ensures that all sales are accounted for, even if you have no internet access. Once connection resumes, all sales data will sync up to your back office to keep your records accurate.
The ability to make sales and perform basic POS actions without wifi connection means you can think up creative ways to service your customers outside of your physical store.
Contactless payments
Depending on your payment hardware, you may be able to accept contactless payments like NFC tap-to-pay, ApplePay, GooglePay, and SamsungPay.
This allows you to offer flexible payment options for your customers, while also protecting them (and your employees) from physical contact.
See if you own a contactless payment-enabled device.
E-commerce for paid online classes and services
Webstores are a great opportunity to boost sales when your physical store locations are closed or operating at limited capacity.
Can’t sell your products in-store? Try demoing them online instead. Maybe you occasionally host in-store events. Those can be moved to the web, with an e-commerce solution to help you keep track of attendance (online passes can be sold for $0, if needed!)
Right now, you can get set up with Shopify, WooCommerce, or ShopZ.
Remote payments
If you’re offering curbside pickup or phone orders, you can charge customers remotely through your payment processor.
This can be done for curbside pickup phone orders, deliveries, or other unique payment processes that you might be implementing.
Right now, customers using Global Payments (formally TSYS, Cayan) as their payment processor have access to theGenius Vault to charge customers remotely.
Recurring billing
If you’re setting up subscription services, you might want to set up recurring billing in your Erply account.
Recurring billing automatically creates product invoices at set increments, which can be billed for any predetermined length of time. Erply does the hard work for you so you can focus on servicing your customers.
Industry-specific retail adaptation ideas
Below, we’ll list some industry-specific ideas on how you can adapt your retail business to the changing times. Be sure to check out all of the sections, even if an industry does not match your business, you might gain inspiration on how certain ideas can be adapted to your specific store!
Most, if not all of these ideas can be implemented online or in-store. Be sure to contact our team if you need e-commerce set up on your Erply account,
Remember, although people are spending more time indoors, those numbers will decrease as states open up and as the weather improves. Try to envision how your products can be used outdoors or during seasonal events while still adhering to social distancing policies.
Fireworks stores
Areas particularly affected by stay-at-home orders are seeing an increase in one-off fireworks usage, This will, of course, only increase as the weather warms up and we inch closer to summer holidays.
Recommend setting up fireworks bundles to encourage sales, to new and existing customers. Starter packs can be used to help sell slower moving items and introduce new audiences to your store..
Depending on your state’s fireworks regulations, you might also want to set up subscription boxes, or a “fireworks of the month” bundle. Customers can pick up a box each month or sign up for delivery. Both options can take advantage of contactless payments or recurring billing.
Finally, don’t forget to take advantage of promotions and coupons during those summer holidays to increase sales!
Gardening stores
Quarantined or not, your green-thumbed customers will still be looking for your expertise on plant care and gardening tips.
We recommend providing online gardening classes with Q&A sessions. These can be paid for in your online store, which may also encourage customers to make additional online purposes.
You also can set up bundle and assembly products in your Erply account to create planter kits or herb sets. Some gardening stores have been offering creative options too, such as a paint your own planter kit.
Sports stores
Sporting events might be cancelled, but that doesn’t mean your customers won’t have a need for your merchandise in the future. Warm weather encourages at-home practice, even if full on competitions are off the table.
Now is a great time to take advantage of sales and coupons to keep inventory moving in preparation for season reopenings. These can come bundled with online training classes that give customers tips and tricks for different sport techniques, stretches, etc.
Online video game sporting alternatives, like NBA 2K and FIFA, can be used to keep your customers engaged with your brand. Try partnering with local schools or recreational leagues to form online brackets, then charge online entry fees for players looking to participate.
Arts and crafts shops
The arts have seen a huge boom during state-wide quarantines. From therapeutic activities to creating artwork that supports good causes, such as Healthcare Heros or Rainbow Hunt, there’s a place for craft shops in every home. You might also want to consider bundling items that can be used to create drive-by signage.
Online classes or video tutorials are a popular indoor activity that you can sell to your customers through an online webshop. Maybe your shop hosted paint and sip nights. You can either take these to the web, or provide customers with resources and ideas to host their own.
Apparel stores
Did you know that the color red is the hardest color to capture on photo and video? As more and more people adjust to working from home, promotions and coupons can be used to highlight webcam-friendly clothing and accessories.
If you want to take on a more hands-on response to covid-19, you can try to repurpose inventory items to create protective face masks. What’s more, you can offer online classes on how to transform different clothing items into face masks.
All of the above can be done using a basic e-commerce platform!
Beauty brands
Wellness is a huge focus during these coronavirus times, which means you can attract new customers by offering different wellness-themed bundles and packages. You may want to set up subscription boxes using Erply’s recurring billing tools.
Brainstorm creative ideas for your products, such as webcam beauty tips for women and men. Bonus points if you can partner with actual customers or a local influencer and work a creative social hashtag to build a sense of community. You can even use coupon codes to encourage more of these sales, and commission an influencer from right within Erply.
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POS Solutions, Ecommerce Merchandising
Article | June 7, 2024
Digital innovations continue to be a driving force in changing how people make and receive payments. Cash registers are becoming obsolete as business owners now seek to achieve greater flexibility and control. Similarly, the days of basic systems and stationary credit card leaders are long gone. POS systems for restaurants are changing, evolving, and morphing in response to the demands of restaurateurs and other hospitality business owners for features that did not exist 10 years ago.
Impact of mPOS on Restaurants
The emerging startup business of mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) systems enables clean features to be considered in the overall restaurant-oriented design at a reasonable cost and with a lesser amount of time and effort. With mPOS systems, restaurants can enhance and improve their operational environment.
By opening the gates of traditional POS systems to external developers and the cloud, restaurant owners have ample opportunities to streamline existing processes, such as coupon redemption, and implement entirely new initiatives, like location-based marketing.
The ability of the mPOS solutions to provide versatility to restaurant payment systems is one of their greatest benefits. Using a portable device equipped with POS software, waitstaff can print food orders for the kitchen, create customer bills, and accept payments from a variety of options such as QR codes, UPI, debit cards, mobile wallets, and many others.
At the same time, these POS systems can facilitate communication between various restaurant departments. For instance, every order can feed information in real-time, allowing for the automatic tracking of inventory levels. In many instances, point-of-sale systems can also manage restaurant reservations.
The Wave of the Future
In recent years, the introduction of new technologies has enabled smart business solutions, such as mobile point of sale (mPOS), which have pushed the hospitality industry to achieve higher levels of internal expertise in core operational areas.
The restaurant sector has long been a creative space that caters to consumers' and cultures' ever-changing tastes. There is now an embrace of technology that customizes the customer experience in unimaginable ways. Restaurant POS systems will play a prominent role in enabling these hospitality spaces to introduce new ways of serving food to customers, in the coming years, providing opportunities for POS solution providers to launch advanced restaurant POS systems and capitalize on them.
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POS Retail
Article | May 10, 2024
Here are the latest stories to emerge as retailers and brands deal with the impact that the global spread of the coronavirus has had on their businesses. This daily update offers retail executives the chance to stay-up-to-date on all that's happening within the retail industry, particularly as they put into motion their own COVID-19 response plans. Retail sales saw their biggest monthly drop on record during March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic forced many retailers to temporarily close across the nation, the National Retail Federation reported. However, grocery store sales climbed, as well as sales from other "essential" retailers, offsetting some of the decline.
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POS Solutions
Article | March 22, 2022
For any type or size of merchant, the point of sale (POS) is by definition a mission-critical system. In addition to being a basic tool for retail and companies to conduct business, today’s point of sale systems can also be profitably tied in with key operational solutions, such as inventory management, labor scheduling, and customer marketing.
Here’s How to Choose a POS System for Your Unique Business
Before we dive into how to choose a POS system, let’s look at why you need one in the first place.
A POS system does more than transactions. It's the beating heart of your store's operations, from inventory management and loss prevention to employee management, AR/AP tracking and more.
Small businesses of all types and across industries use POS systems:
Retail and consumer good stores
Liquor stores (within grocery stores and standalone wine & spirits stores
Tobacco stores and smoke shops
Grocery stores and markets
Convenience stores
Lawn & garden centers
Hardware stores
But different types of businesses have different POS system needs. POS systems’ importance makes selecting the one that’s right for your business a challenge.
Here are seven tips to help formulate the right questions to ask POS vendors as you narrow down your options.
Answer these 5 questions before you research POS systems
What features does your current POS system lack or do poorly?
This will help you prioritize your POS needs and ensure current pain points are addressed with your new POS system.
What type of POS hardware will you need?
From touchscreen monitors and cash drawers to receipt printers and pinpads, determining your POS hardware needs helps you know what to look for and get cost estimates from POS vendors.
What POS software, apps, and integrations will you need?
Your POS software is the brains of the operation. Be sure to identify specific functionality and app integrations needed.
What does your business growth plan look like?
This is an important one. You want a POS system that can scale with you as you grow. The last thing you need is to replace your POS system again because you've outgrown it.
What is your budget?
Every POS vendor you talk to will ask this question, so it's best to prepare for it. If you don't have a number in mind, you can use our Build & Price Tool to create your ideal POS system and see what it would cost.
Choose a POS system that makes checkout a breeze
Is your checkout process simple and easy for customers, or do you find that long lines and slow checkout speeds are holding you back?
You need to maximize the checkout space for an optimal customer experience. POS systems with a minimal footprint keep things simple for your employees, and can even allow you to have multiple registers to service customers.
The pace of transactions is a key factor as well. Employees must be able to quickly scan products or use smart, intuitive product lookup or keyed entries to minimize wait time. You can even use mobile devices connected to your POS system to augment your checkout capabilities.
Consider your inventory management needs
One of the biggest benefits of POS systems is their ability to automatically deduct sold items from inventory, making key measurements such as inventory on hand and item-by-item sales data far more accurate. However, if your business operates with a limited, relatively uncomplicated inventory – e.g. just a few hundred SKUs with little variation in size, style, or color – choosing a POS system with advanced inventory management capabilities will be a wasted investment.
Key questions to ask include:
How many items do you carry in each store?
Do you look at each item as a unique item or as a style?
How do you order inventory from suppliers if the item has varying colors/sizes? Do you need to see item attributes as a matrix?
Do other buyers/store personnel need to be able to fill in or look up on-hand information without visiting the store floor or calling other stores?
What merchandise information do you want to be able to view at your desktop?
Decide what additional functions you want your POS to provide
Even if your needs are currently fairly basic, that doesn’t mean they won’t expand as you grow. Consider additional capabilities you may want your system to provide in the future, such as:
Time and attendance/time clock
Sales reporting, broken down by associate, store, department, time of day, etc.
Customer marketing, allowing you to capture the customer’s purchase history and other data for future marketing, and customer loyalty programs.
Transfer systems, allowing associates to transfer merchandise between stores, and on-hand lookup, allowing each store to see at a glance what inventory other stores have on hand.
Gift cards, tracking gift cards sold and their redemption.
Identify the types of POS peripherals you will need
POS system hardware isn’t limited to the cashier’s touchscreen. Think about whether dual display screens, showing customers what they ordered to improve accuracy, or displaying ads to promote key items, are worth the investment. Compare thermal printers to ribbon printers: thermal printers use heat to print receipts so even though they cost more initially, retailers can save long-term on the ink cartridges required by ribbon printers.
Determine which POS security features your store needs
Security must be a key element of any POS system, from the basics (lockable cash drawers, cash drops, and password-protected access) to erecting firewalls around the POS system’s network to guard against malware attacks.
Retailers accepting payment cards must ensure their POS systems comply with the latest Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). Retailers doing a high volume of payment card business may want to consider using encryption, which protects customer data during transactions by creating a cryptographic key that denies access to anyone without the appropriate decrypting key.
Don't forget about POS reporting to help guide your business
We get it: reporting is not a "sexy" feature. But it is critically important. Sales reports, inventory and catalog reports, and customer history tracking are just a few of the key data points available in most POS systems to help you make smart business decisions.
When it comes to choosing a POS system, reporting cannot be overlooked.
Ready to Choose a POS System for Your Business?
Finding a POS system that meets your business’ current needs while also providing the tools for future growth can be challenging. Keep both short-term and long-term requirements in mind when evaluating different solutions.
You can find more must-ask questions and considerations to choose the right POS system in our Retail POS System Buyers' Guide. For example:
Local database vs. cloud: what type of software is right for your business?
What information do you need to choose a credit card processor?
The questions you need to ask to get past a POS system sales pitch
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