Back to school offers retailers an enormous opportunity to test tactics, gain insight and prepare for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season that follows. Here are just a few ideas to get you started.
Stress-test your omnichannel
Back-to-school season is a great time to test your omnichannel retail operation, pinpoint shortfalls, test modifications in store, and shore up BOPIS operations. Is heavy BOPIS traffic clogging the parking lot? Are store layouts conducive to consumers adding last-minute convenience purchases prior to checkout? How accurate is your inventory count? By using back to school as a “pilot,” you can leverage lessons learned to perfect your omnichannel operation in time for Black Friday.
Mobile payments
Whether implementing self-checkout solutions, contactless payments or arming associates with mobile checkouts, the transition away from the traditional cash register/cashier set-up is a significant change. Employees may experience challenges handling customers while conducting transactions and looking up inventory. The retailer may experience losses from a reduction in “impulse purchases” that take place while consumers wait in line at the register. New sources of loss may need to be identified and addressed. Take careful note of challenges and areas that could use improvement and address them between September and November.
Up your social media game
Gen Z is up and coming and is on social media. Three out of four parents say kids influence their purchase decisions and they spend 50 percent more when their kids are involved in the purchase decision. It follows that retailers that can deliver information, experience, promotions and incentives effectively via social media will outperform those that can’t. Use back to school, as an opportunity to experiment with promotions, loyalty programs and interactive campaigns. Use the lessons learned to deliver more effective social media this coming holiday season.
Whether it’s out of stocks, a clunky online CX or lack of engagement that trigger abandoned shopping carts or simply loss of consumers to competitive locations, retailers have an opportunity to identify and address key issues in the coming weeks so that they can ace Black Friday and the holiday shopping season.