Boost your conversion rate
INTEL sponsors an annual conference in Lisbon for technology retailers from across Europe. I was invited to speak at one a couple of years ago on the changing customer and disruption in retail. As part of my research in advance, I mystery-shopped several technology retailers across Europe. I was surprised that for such a sophisticated sector with deep pockets, their professionalism in ‘converting’ browsers to spenders needed much improvement.
As I mentioned last week, online retailing is indeed a great threat to traditional retail but I am firmly convinced that ‘bricks and mortar’ retailers can compete. We hear much about customers researching before they enter a store. The great piece of news here is they do indeed go into bricks and mortar stores. Retailers can maximise that opportunity to romance the customer into buying in-store rather than on-line.
Last week, I shared the fundamental sales levers for all retailers that are locked in this simple formula.
‘Footfall’ (the number of customers entering the store) multiplied by ‘conversion’ (the percentage of those that actually buy rather than just browse) multiplied by ‘average transaction value (ATV)’, equals sales. This formula gives a retailer pointers for where to focus their efforts. Dare I ask, is footfall really down? Or do retailers actually mean that they’re not ‘converting’ quite as many? Either way, retailers have two more factors to focus on with ‘conversion’ and ‘ATV’. For example, if footfall drops, it may be possible to still achieve your targets by putting even more focus on ‘conversion’ and ‘average transaction value’. Selling is after all, a numbers game.
When I talk to independent retailers about converting browsers to spenders, many express concern that it’s ‘pushy’. Let me deal with this immediately. I hate pushy selling. In fact if I get even a whiff of pushy selling in my own shopping trips, I get defensive. Last week I offered some ideas to drive footfall. This week I’ll share some tips — the three Cs — on how to convert more of those browsers into spenders in a non-pushy way.