I’m outside right now, standing on the sidewalk, phone in hand. And there I seem to be staying. How can you get me to take those few final steps through your doors?
Perhaps I have no reason to. I’ve just found your product online, and I can buy it with a couple of clicks. Job done, now for a coffee. At another store, since yours doesn’t serve it (now, there’s a clue).
But, there must be a reason I got as far as the sidewalk in the first place. I know that online shopping misses out on one of the things that might make me want to come into your store, and that is the fun. The browsing; the serendipity of finding new and unexpected things; the sheer physicality of enjoying your products. Maybe the way they look, or smell, or the way they fit into my hands.
So, if you want me in your store, offer me an experience that I’m not going to get off a screen. “Stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap” is a good motto, up to a point, but there’s more to putting your products out there than just stacking. I want products that I can find easily. I want serendipity; happy surprises; an innovative layout that will guide me to what I want to find but en route may open my eyes to new possibilities. You know how an online store will tell you that “people who bought X also bought Y”? Give me the real world equivalent. Some of us don’t like being fed ideas at the whim of a computer. We like to do our own discovering. So, humor us.
But the biggest obstacle is that, from where I stand, I can see the checkout queue. And it’s not a pretty sight. Thanks, but I’ve just decided Amazon’s delivery guy can do the hard work for me. There may be very good reasons why I should surrender an irreplaceable slice of my life to stand in a queue to part with my money, but none of them come to mind right now.
Wouldn’t it be great if, you know, the checkout staff could come to me instead?
And they can. I don’t just mean by having multiple sales points around the store – though that is a good start. I mean having a guy come up, where you’re standing, right there, right then, and enable you to make the purchase.
Revel’s mobile POS system lets your staff process transactions anywhere on the shop floor. Instead of us having to come to you, you come to us. A staff member equipped with the mobile POS system can immediately answer my questions and take my card payment, via a PCI compliant system that guarantees the transaction will be 100% secure. Meanwhile the system will automatically update your inventory and stock control.
So, picture what can happen when I finally enter your store. If you’re old school, then I find the thing I want (and maybe a couple of other things I didn’t know I wanted until I saw them); I queue up and pay for them; and I leave.
Or, I do all of the above, except that I pay for them on the spot where I discover them. I then make to leave the store, but thanks to all the work you’ve done on making it an interesting and fun place to be, I linger a little. I browse a bit further as I head for the exit. And over there is just the thing I also need. I wouldn’t have seen it if I’d had to pay at the checkout; I wouldn’t have turned around and retraced my steps through your store. This way, I get to browse all I like, I can buy when I like, and your staff (who I assume are capable, engaged human beings) can observe my purchases and point me in the direction of something else that they think I might like. We’re back to “people who bought X also bought Y”, but this time guided by an actual human being.
It’s almost like being online, but with people.
That will get me straight into your store. And I’ll come back.
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