Tips for Improving Your Retail Store and Website

Running a physical retail store and an associated website nowadays is necessary to keep business afloat. However, it also poses serious challenges. If you want your business to truly crush the competition, you must constantly find ways to improve your store and website. Here are several tips that might help:

Evaluate Your Store

If you want to improve your store, you first need to find out what’s broken about it. Hire a mystery shopper, who is a person who works for companies that provide unbiased reviews of services and products solved by other companies. If there are any issued with your products, the point of sale, or customer reps, the mystery shopper will be able to spot those and provide you with details.

Collect Customer Feedback on your Website

To improve the website, collect customer feedback via an online form or a survey. Your customers will be able to tell you exactly how your website should be improved. They might give valuable product information and tips to make them more appealing. You will get a lot of complaints. Sort through them and find out what they are trying to tell you, and act on the suggestions.

Increase Website Speed

You can easily increase the appeal and the functionality of your web store by increasing its speed. Site speed is directly related to website traffic and conversion rate. Let’s face it; would you wait forever on a website that took ages to load? Of course not. Neither would the customers. So, take steps to improve the site speed. You can do this by compressing images, decreasing the number of plugins and upgrading the hosting package.

Arrange a Free Giveaway

Grab the attention of potential customers online and offline by arranging a free giveaway via social media. This is a good way to connect customers who are online with customers who are offline. You can generate traffic to your website, and have some of that traffic convert to real life customers at your store. Target the giveaway to locals who are more likely to visit your store. You may want to arrange an online free giveaway as well.

Offer Competitive Prices

Clearly, offering competitive prices is the best way to crush the competition. You can also offer plenty of bargains, special deals and discounts to attract customers. You can attract more online customers with bargains and deals. Use holiday discounts to get local customers to shop at your store during the end of the year.

Have Email Lists

Email lists are great for keeping touch with returning customers. The customers who have already purchased from you are the ones who are most likely to buy again. Email marketing is the best way to keep these customers from turning to competitors. Include a giant banner on your homepage asking people to sign up for the emailing list. You can also collect emails at with a point of sale system at your store.

If you really want to give customers a one of a kind experience, keeping your store and website clean is a good way to go as well. Literally keep the store clean, and keep the website free of spam ads and component clutter.