Is it too early to start thinking about Christmas? If you’re a business, chances are you’ve already started considering just how early is too early to start putting out the decorations and getting ready for the annual rush to the stores.
The staffing levels look good, layaway’s back in the game, and…have you forgotten about the mobile shoppers? That’s a big chunk of shoppers that may be interested in shopping with you, but how do you prepare for those shoppers? We’ll show you how, right now!
The numbers make it clear: the National Retail Federation said that shopping was actually up 4.6 percent between 2013 and 2014, and sales are projected to push the trillion-dollar mark at $965 billion between November and January.
With an increasing number of those shoppers being Millennials, and Millennials loving the use of mobile devices in stores, the question remains as to how to get that business. Three simple ways can help get you ready.
First, don’t skimp on the mobile payments. Customers do like shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, but to prevent your store from becoming just another unpaid showroom for Amazon, make sure your mobile payments offerings are up to snuff.
A Forrester study suggests that mobile payments will push $143 billion by 2019, so make sure you’re not leaving your cut of that money on the table for someone else. Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, or even PayPal…be ready for it one way or the other.
Second, consider the value of mobile promotions. Some systems allow mobile users to be instantly alerted to special deals when they walk into the store, or even walk past the display of the item in question. While you go to great lengths to make your displays look sharp, imagine how much better it can be if the displays actually send alerts to a user’s mobile device about a sale.
Third, make sure your website is ready for mobile. Google recently went through and delivered some nasty site-ranking punishments to those sites not sufficiently mobile—a development some referred to as “mobilegeddon”—and it did quite a bit of damage. But as bad as that was, it’s actually worse for reasons completely unrelated to Google.
Shoppers will be turning to smartphones in record numbers, in stores, for access to information about products, about the store itself, or about competitors’ pricing. So be ready for this by making sure your site is properly up to snuff.
These three points together will make a great start toward ensuring that your business is ready for an increasingly mobile holiday. But don’t stop there, either; consider adding free Wi-Fi connections for your shop to make it easier for those customers to connect; they want the connection, so if you’re helping them get that connection, it might help improve your image with said customers.
Don’t forget about all the basics, either, like having enough staff on hand and having enough stock, as well as the good prices. All of these together are likely to add up to a Christmas that will prove green, regardless of the amount of snow on the ground.