Dear shopping fairy...

Dear shopping fairy...

If there is a fairy godmother in charge of shopping I hope she is listening.

I hope she takes online and high street retailers to one side and says, “Look, your brain does something funny when you go to work, don't you realise what the world is like for customers?”.

I hope she sprinkles them with her fairy dust so they listen when we tell them about the hundreds of little opportunities to sell that they miss every single trading day.

I need to understand what you’re telling me

Show people where to go as soon as they start to shop. When they get to your products make the descriptions, sizes and prices easy to read. Remember that customers have criteria — if you understand how customers are deciding what to buy, then you have more chance of selling to them.

I need to find a product I want

Test out a customer's “journey” around your store — or ecommerce website — and look at how their needs and criteria change. Clearly signpost changing rooms and cash registers from different directions so that the customer knows where to go. If you use mannequins to highlight outfits, put the products right by them, clearly marked. Make sure packaging clearly and easily communicates what’s inside.

I need to buy at a time that suits me

If customers have a need now, why not satisfy it? If your processes are fixed to a strict schedule of seasonal buying, you’re at the mercy of the weather making your customers want to buy something that you don’t have. Don’t apply fashion season rules to non-fashion basics; if this happens in your store, ask your customers if it suits them — if it doesn’t, change it.

I need to avoid stuff I cannot buy

Don’t spend any time or money offering things to customers who cannot buy them. Don’t put any barriers in front of customers with money. Arrange sale clothing by size, not price — during a sale we always need to know what size a garment is and never how much it costs (it’s already in the sale).

I don’t want to repeat myself

If customers have given their contact details to you once, it should be possible to buy from you without having to give them again. When customers do make an enquiry, make it easy for them to progress this to a purchase. Follow up enquiries that haven’t led to a sale and find out why. Knowing why someone hasn’t bought from you is just as important as knowing why they have.

Don’t confuse information with knowledge — having broad market research to hand isn’t the same as understanding the people who buy from you. Think like a customer not a manager, you can't afford to ignore any incremental benefits to your bottom line.

Lynn Allison FCIM, Chartered Marketer is the author of Catching the Chameleon, published by Ecademy Press.

Competition winners

Thank you for all your great retail tips and comments on Lynn's blog. And congratulations to Craig Dearden, Tim Shapcott and Bronwyn Durand who all win a copy of Lynn's book, Catching the Chameleon.

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