No matter where your convenience store is located, there are many ways to attract more customers and encourage them to increase their spend. The goal of many business owners is to find out how they can increase their profits by getting more customers interested in their product and visit their store more often. This is an essential part of any growing business, or businesses that are looking to expand. Here are several ways to boost traffic, increase sales, and outperform your competition in the convenience store business.Customers
Research Your Closest Competition Customers
Your site likely competes with several local c-stores. Researching these rivals is an important step towards increasing your sales and effectively improving your site’s competitive edge. These are some questions to help you identify areas of improvement so you can exceed the value you currently provide:
- Based on location, what demographic of customer does the competitor serve?
- What items/displays do they have on the register counter top?
- Do they personalize their station or store? What impression does their decor give you?
- What offers are they promoting with banners and signage?
- Do they offer specialty aisles or aisle sections dedicated to an item category?
- What are their customers buying when you visit their shop?
- What items appear to be best sellers?
- Do they have any promotional signage visible from the road?
Using the questions above, you can develop your own strategy to compete for specific customer demographics at your store. This will be critical for acquiring new customers and even acquiring the customers from your competitors. Customers
Know Your Customers and What they Want Customers
Some items like USB chargers and hot coffee will be best sellers no matter where you’re located but devoting more shelf and counter top space to items your customers want or need is a great way to increase c-store sales. It’s reasonable to expect a c-store along an interstate highway to have different customers than a c-store in a suburban area. Customers
For example, a c-store with long-distance truckers as customers may offer personal grooming items to its customers and effectively increase sales. Or, if your c-store is near a school, devoted shelf space to high margin toys can drive sales. Customers
Create a Better Customer Experience Customers
Providing a better experience at your convenience store can increase customer spend and loyalty. There are simple changes you can make to your site to create a better customer experience, such as hiring friendly c-store attendants, maintaining clean restrooms, investing in landscaping for your c-store, ensuring your forecourt is well-lit, and providing free air and water to help earn repeat business. All of these items lead to a better customer experience and a better impression of your store. Customers
Discounts/Specials Customers
Offering discounts and specials can drive your customers towards larger purchases, more frequently. Discounts and specials are also some of the most effective tools to entice customers away from your competitors. You can provide discounts on seasonal items, your competitor’s best sellers, high-margin items, and closely related items. Customers
Use Eye-Catching Signage Customers
People are always comparing your convenience store to other ones based on your convenience store signage. To catch the eyes of customers and drive more traffic to your convenience store, leverage the exterior of your store. Your signage could promote a freebie with another item purchased (such as buy two getting another one free), you can offer promotional bundles, or advertisement for specialty/seasonal items inside your c-store.
These strategies can help increase your c-store sales. Experiment with the options that work best for your store to determine which are most effective in driving sales, then watch the results in real time. To ensure that you’re prioritizing items your customers will actually buy, always consult your back-office software’s inventory management report to determine best sellers. You can also use the sales volume information to track the effectiveness of any changes you make to your store. Customers
Two Reasons Why You Aren’t Seeing Foot Traffic Customers
People aren’t buying less; they are shopping differently. When your customer knows exactly what they want, they are going to go searching online, collecting referrals and ideas from friends and then jumping online to make the purchase. Even grocery stores have gotten into the game by providing online shopping and delivery. While there are certainly situations in which a visit to a retail store is warranted, even then, folks are loathed to add one more stop to their list of errands. Customers
Sometimes customers’ priorities shift due to economic changes in the marketplace and this can often be out of the control of convenience stores. A good strategy moving forward is adapting and offering consumers what they are willing to buy and offer those products at affordable price points. Customers
How to Drive Foot Traffic to Your Store Customers
Foot traffic is the most important aspect of a convenience store’s success, because the presence of people walking around a specific space usually influences sales volumes. Convenience stores can use foot traffic as an indication of projected sales. The most important information that can, actually provide retailers with valuable data about traffic includes the time spent in the store, the average shop time on an annual basis, the types of products mostly preferred, the distance between a customer’s residence and the store, and traffic data comparisons to competitive stores. Customers
There are many ways to track the movement of customers in the store or even a few feet down the road. Most convenience stores use their wi-fi network or POS systems and integrate the data into the customer traffic analytics to receive the information they want. This is an effective way to keep track of foot traffic and to potentially increase foot traffic based on the acquired data. Customers
Here are some things you can do to increase your c-store’s foot traffic: Customers.
- Focus on existing customers
- Research existing foot traffic
- Target a specific type of customer
- Use local search and advertising
- Increase curb and store appeal
- Add catchy outdoor signs and displays
- Speed up the shopping experience
- Offer complementary products
- Offer free wi-fi
- Leverage social media
- Hire and train employees to be engaging and friendly
- Allow customers to buy online and pickup in store
- Personalize your marketing campaigns
- Optimize your website for advertisement
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