Small Additions to Your Retail Store that Make a Big Difference in Customer Retention

Whenever heading into a retail business the product we’re looking for is only part of the equation. While we might not always notice, there are many less obvious components of how a business operates that affect how likely we are to return. Having stable customer retention for your retail business is a key goal for your company.

Understand this reality as a retail owner or manager, and you can better equip yourself for improved customer retention, with some popular ideas being easier to implement than you might think.

Touch Free Cleaning Options

A good retail owner always strives to keep their environment clean, but customers have no simple way of knowing the effort you’ve gone through. Many visitors also simply like to keep to their own dedicated hygiene practices, and a store offering certain features can make or break the experience. Surveys from the US reveal that 61% of customers prefer making purchases from companies that accept contactless payments. This idea extends to restaurants too, where 40% of people surveyed said they would prefer to view, order, and pay from their phone rather than having to deal with direct interaction. 

Aside from contactless payments, one of the best ways to manage this part of cleanliness is to adopt an automatic soap dispenser in store bathrooms. In this way, health-conscious visitors will be pleased without the need to touch anything.

As many types of sickness can be asymptomatic in the early days, we often never know we’re sick until it’s too late, and manual soap pumps can be a common way to share disease. Automatic systems bypass this concern, with advantages that similarly apply to staff.

Clearly Labelled Navigation

While it might seem too simple to ignore, retailers far too often make the mistake of not keeping an up-to-date navigation chart of how to navigate their space. Failing in this area can make customers frustrated, relaying the idea that a business doesn’t care about its customer’s time.

Addressing a navigation problem can be managed in a few ways. Proper signage is always a good start, and businesses can take this a step further by colour-coding marks on the floor for customers to follow. Printouts can also be an effective way to reach customers, as well as using images alongside text if possible.

Our final suggestion would be to include a QR code that customers can use to bring you to your website/free Wi-Fi. A website to guide users is much easier to keep updated than paper printouts, it’s greener, and it can hook into businesses’ databases so everything in and out of stock is displayed accurately.

Engaging better with your customers doesn’t have to require a huge amount of time and effort, it can be a simple move achievable without enormous investment. What it will require is careful consideration of the range of customer attitudes and mindsets, to guide them to a more comfortable and welcoming experience. Make the move, and you might be surprised at what a difference it can make.

Learn more about customer loyalty scheme to improve Customer Retention