The One Thing You Need to Know About Creating a Remarkable Retail Shopping Experience
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PrintEvery retailer has at some point thought about the design of his retail stores in order to create a remarkable customer experience with the goal to maximize revenues. The design of retail stores with customer experience in mind is a complex task and usually a lot of focus is put on the stores environment, the stimulation of the customer's senses and extraordinary service.
With all these different areas that provide opportunities to design remarkable experiences, the ultimate question remains: What are the areas of customer experience design that bwill have a direct impact on your sales?
Let them touch and they will buy
A recent study has shown that the longer people touch certain products, the higher is the probability that they will actually buy the product. The researchers from Ohio State University and Illinois State University discovered this by asking participants about their willingness to pay for a product in a bidding process depending on the time they have hold the cup in their hands. In case your products are locked away in a glass showcase or - even worse - have a sign that says "don't touch" you should think if there might be a better solution to present your products and give customer a chance to experience them. You might be missing out significant amount of sales.
Thinking about these findings, I asked myself: What is really the essence of a remarkable shopping experience? What drives people to buy instead of just look around?
The reason why people enter your shop
It is clear that not every potential customer enters a shop to make a purchase. Sometimes people enter your shop just to look around and collect information. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the underlying reason why people enter your shop:
Customers enter your shop because they want to experience your products, not your shop.
The focus of designing retail shopping experiences is therefore on designing opportunities for the customer to experience the product as realistically as possible and not to design the shop so that it creates a better experience.
Customer want to experience what it is like to own your products - your shop should be designed to help create these "product discovery experiences".
Exclusive interior is overrated
Following this approach, it becomes obvious that exclusive and expensive interior does not necessary lead to a better shopping experience. Potential customers will enter your shop because they want to experience your products, not to see a nice shop. Just ask yourself how this exclusive wood boarding will influence the "product discovery experience".
“But what about exclusive fashion boutiques?” you might ask. “They have nice shops with expensive interior so it must have an impact, right?”. Yes, they have expensive interior but the interior is secondary. The primary experience driver is the interaction with the sales clerk who will "simulate" real world experiences by telling you how great this new suit or dress looks on you. This is a simulation of the real-life effect that you want to achieve with your exclusive clothes, handbag or watch, created by employees in a personalized “product discovery experience”. A pleasant environment plays a role to create a remarkable experience, but it is not the key driver of the experience.
The implications for your business
If you are responsible for designing a retail experience or shop for your business, you should ask yourself the following question: Are you designing a "shop experience" or are you designing a "product discovery experience"? If you approach the design problem from a "product discovery experience" perspective, you should identify the design elements that contribute to a simulation of the effects of owning your products. Let your customers feel what it is like to own your products.
Approaching the retail shopping experience problem from this perspective, I am sure you will come up with countless opportunities to create a truly remarkable customer experience that will not just make shopping more fun, but also influence your bottom-line.
Images courtesy of [silent7seven] and [esp22]
The is an article from the "Customer Experience Labs" at www.customer-experience-labs.com.
Bernhard Schindlholzer
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Alan J. Zell
The Retailing Experience
Berhnard. Yes, the customer experience is prime. While I did not coin the phrase, “Retailing is theater,” it is true. And, we, who are/were in retailing and customers are te players. Some time ago when I first read the phrase, the author went on to ask “When you walk out of a play or movie, what is the first thing one of you says to the other?” It is, “How did you like it?”
So, too, does this happen every minute of every hour of every day, month, year. Not only does it happen when they leave the store, it happens while they are in the store. One of the problems of this approach by some in retailing, especially display directors and merchandisers, is that they believe the setting is important thing just as it is with any stage production. However, stage setting are illusions – built to look like something is isn’t but gives the impression it is.
I walk into store after store where the display and, even, the decor takes away from the merchandise. On of my mentors told me that when a customer comments on the decor before they comment on the merchandise, the decor is deterring sales. It also applies to what salespeople wear (I’ve along story on this), the lack of prices where they can be seen, merchandise treated with apathy, like things not being with like things, etc.
I’ve seen window displays that have clever bon mots but nothing about what it is in the store, the material, etc. Its purpose many retail management and display people tell me is to attract attentions and to set an ambiance for the store. When I take management to look at other stores’ window, I ask them if they can tell me where the merchandise can be found if an item in the window fit what they are doing, planning to do, or would like to do should they run into it. Then I take them back to look at their own store windows and they are shocked. Ah, but getting their display staff to see it that way is another thing.
The same thing is happening with web sites, catalogues, retail advertising, etc.
I was taught and I try to teach my clients that the design of a store, a window, a department, sections in a department have to be done with the first time customer/visitor in mind. That’s what will make for a good shopping experience and is what turns potential buyers into buyers and buyers into repeat buyers and who tell others about their shopping experience.
But, neither you or I should stop with retailing. The same things you wrote about apply to trade shows of all types, craft fairs, and, btw, schools, religious buildings, law offices, restaurants. . . wherever someone walks into the resources place of businesses. It is the experience, upon entering that sets the state that later determines if customers/clients’ time, effort and /or money is spent efficiently.
Alan
Alan J. Zell, Ambassador of Selling, Attitudes for Selling
Recipient of the Murray Award for Marketing Excellence
Attitudes for Selling offers consulting, workshops and speaking on all business topics that affect sales.
He can be reached at azell@aol.com or through his web site www.sellingselling.com
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