A retail POS or point of sale system like the Vend cloud POS can help you increase retail sales. The following are some of the ways you can use your iPad point of sale software to increase your revenues.
1. Improve Customer Experience
According to the 2017 Dimension Data Global CX Benchmarking report, improving customer experience leads to revenue growth. Specifically, customer experience improvements lead to a 92% increase in customer loyalty, an 84% increase in revenue, and 79% cost savings.
The positive impact of improving customer experience is confirmed by Forrester’s 2020 Customer Experience Index survey. In mass-market auto manufacturers, improving customer experience by just one point leads to additional revenue of more than U.S. 1 billion.
You, too, can grow your revenue by improving your customer experience. One way to do that is by using an iPad point of sale software like the Vend POS. This will give your customers faster checkout and personalised interactions, which should improve the customer experience.
●Faster Checkout
Among the many benefits that a retail POS system brings is a faster and seamless checkout experience. And providing your customers with a quick and seamless checkout is one of the simplest ways of improving customer experience.
Using the Vend POS, for instance, you can create quick keys of your most popular products. When products are not on quick keys, you can conveniently search for them through keywords or a barcode scanner.
Making in-demand products easily accessible and clickable on an iPad point of sale software reduces the need to input universal product codes manually.
And having the product easily accessible via keywords means sales personnel no longer have to run to find a replacement when a product has a damaged barcode tag.
These tablet point of sale features should shave time off the checkout process, and this will make your customers happier.
●Personalised Interactions
A tablet-based POS will also let you add notes to receipts. Therefore, you can enhance every point of sale transaction by adding care instructions and personalised messages to your customer’s receipts.
When they ask you something about a product, you can take the initiative and include a copy of your verbal answer on the receipt. This personal touch is effortless and straightforward, but it will make your customer happy.
●Make Happy Customers Happier
According to Forrester’s 2020 Customer Index survey, in many industries, improving customer experience so it goes from good to excellent exponentially increases the benefits of improving customer experience.
In other words, making happy customers happier is even better for your bottom line than making unhappy customers happy.
By integrating a Customer Relationship Management software with your retail POS – and CRM is just one of the many available Vend integrations – you will be able to see pertinent customer information on your POS screen.
You will be able to identify regular customers, and you can give regular big-spenders the VIP treatment. You can let them wait in an exclusive lounge and give them a private showcase of your limited-edition products.
You can give regular customers a stellar experience, something better than their usual experience. This way, you can reap exponential benefits from minimal improvement in customer experience.
2. Maximise Customer Lifetime Value
The customer lifetime value measures the amount of revenue generated by a customer’s relationship with your company. And a POS integrated with a CRM will support your efforts to maximise the customer lifetime value of your customers.
Your CRM-integrated retail POS will let you see important information about customers in your CRM database. You can see a customer’s historical data, how much he usually spends per transaction, and what items he usually buys, among other things.
Knowing this information will help you personalise your approach to every customer. If you see a regular customer looking over your bag collection, you can recommend your latest designs in her favourite colour.
Indeed, guided by the information you have on your customer, you can effectively employ upselling and cross-selling techniques to increase the value of every sales transaction.
3. Take Advantage of Off-site Sales Opportunities
With an advanced cloud POS, you can take your cash register with you anywhere there’s a sales opportunity. You can join trade fairs and caravans. You can also sell curb-side.
With a cloud POS, you can take your product information wherever you go, so you can sell wherever you have the opportunity to do so.
4. Harness Omnichannel Commerce
With a cloud POS, you can sell not only in physical retail locations but also online. You can set up an online store and still sell in your brick-and-mortar store. And your point of sale system will serve both needs.
Therefore, a modern retail POS will let you meet your customer’s needs wherever they like to shop, and you can take advantage of digital commerce.
5. Provide Access to Valuable Business Intelligence
A retail POS can be integrated with many other systems like inventory management software, providing so many valuable and readily accessible business insights.
●Updated Inventory
You can integrate your iPad point of sale software with your inventory management system and automate inventory management. Through the Vend inventory management integration, every sale you make will automatically update your inventory database.
The sale could happen in your store, in many of your stores if you have a chain of stores, curb-side or off-site, or online. Your POS and thus your inventory management system will record all sales from all sales channels. Your POS should also update availability as needed in your online store.
If you rely on manual inventory updating, you risk selling items that have recently become unavailable. This will lead to negative customer experiences, negative reviews, and lost sales from the dissatisfied customers and from the other people they will influence.
●Timely Stock Replenishment
With a POS inventory management software integration, your inventory will always be up-to-date. You can set alerts when stocks reach a certain threshold so that you can order stocks immediately.
This will let you increase on-floor availability, especially of your in-demand and popular items. Consequently, you will not lose any sales from out-of-stock issues.
●Sales Data
Your POS system, integrated with your inventory management system, will give you a ready snapshot of your most important business information.
You will have information on which channels are generating the most revenue, which products are the most popular, and which retail outlet is lagging behind others, and what days and times people shop, among other valuable insights.
Knowing which sales channels are giving you more revenue can guide your marketing spend. If you can pinpoint low-performing stores, you can visit them and understand why the store is showing sub-par performance. Then you can try to resolve issues that are causing them to underperform.
Knowing which products are popular will help you ensure their on-floor availability. Additionally, it can help you rethink your pricing strategy.
For instance, if you see from your sales data that the red version of a particular jumper is selling more than any other colour, you can increase the price just on the red jumper. Or you can give it a higher price but bundle it with a slow-moving item in your inventory.
You can also use bestseller data to revise your merchandise placement. You can place popular items near the back of your store. They should be clearly visible from the front of the store, and you must mark out a clear path to them.
Putting bestsellers and steady sellers as far back as physically possible ensures that customers that want these popular items have to make a “journey” that will expose them to other merchandise in your store. This could increase your average sales per customer.
Finally, knowing what days and times your customer shop will guide your staffing decisions. To decongest certain days and times, moreover, you can introduce low-season promotions. You can give discounts that are available only on a specific non-popular day and time.
Maximise Your Retail POS Revenue Potential
A cloud-based retail point of sale system can help you increase retail sales. It will help you improve customer experience and maximise customer lifetime value and the value of each transaction. A retail POS system will also help you facilitate online sales, sell off-site, and give you access to powerful business intelligence that can help you devise more effective business strategies.
Get in touch with us for a POS software demo if you are ready to experience the difference a cloud retail POS like Lightspeed can do for your business.
Ross Smith
CEO at iPad POS Middle East
