As with years past, brick-and-mortar locations can expect to receive even less traffic this holiday season than they received last year, compounding on last year’s sharp 12 percent drop in traffic from the previous season. Short of relocating your store to the middle of an expressway, here are three ways that you can increase the number of people visiting your stores this year.
1. Update your holiday hours and key location-based information
Your customers are counting on you to provide accurate, relevant information on your website—don’t disappoint them! Start by updating your website’s hours of operation to match your holiday hours, and make sure that the change is noticeable. Nothing turns away prospective customers more quickly than a store that’s closed when it seemingly should be open.
Hours of operation aren’t the only thing in which your customers are interested, though—your holiday sales, specials, and other season-contingent information should all be front-and-center on your website, in your app, and in any other marketing medium that you use. The easier this information is for customers to access, the more traffic you’ll see this year!
Learn how your store ops and marketing teams can easily manage holiday hours, departments, events, services, and more through a unique content management system and publish across the web to drive more qualified local search traffic.
2. Market unique holiday services and in-store experiences on your website
Holiday specials and expanded operating hours are good places to start, but they aren’t enough to get traffic through your doors in and of themselves. To be competitive this holiday season, you need a “thing”—whether it’s a gift-wrapping station, complimentary peppermint hot chocolate, or personal shopping appointments—that you can market to customers as an on-site perk. It can be pretty much anything as long as it both complements your store’s theme and requires people to show up.
Once you’ve established your “thing”, it’s time to start pushing it to individual shoppers with personalized call-to-action emails. Remember, you’re not just selling to the customer what’s in your store—you’re selling the experience of being in the store. By reaching out and activating online shoppers, you can convert those page views into actual traffic that’s genuinely interested in your store’s culture.
With Brickwork, for instance, you can market these opportunities to customers and present calls-to-action such as set a pick-up window for gift-wrapped packages or schedule a personal shopping appointment.
3. Allow customers to send a wishlist or product info to an associate in-store
Your customers may know what’s best for them, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want your opinion as well; in fact, over 70 percent of customers who were asked if they would appreciate feedback on their shopping carts’ contents from an in-store employee answered in the affirmative. You can leverage this desire for shopping input by accepting wishlists and product information from prospective customers in order to set up personalized shopping consultations.
Once the customers are in your store, you can help them find items best-suited to their needs, or tell them about similar items that paired nicely with their choices. Ultimately, your customers will leave satisfied with their purchases—and their overall experiences—and you will net more traffic this holiday season as a result. That’s a win for everyone!
Keeping track of your changing hours, fluctuating traffic, and specialized inventory while trying to contact prospective customers can be a hassle—especially at the height of the holidays. Brickwork’s platform helps you turn digital traffic into in-store customers, allowing you to focus on what matters most. Contact us to learn what Brickwork does for brands and retailers like Nike, Kate Spade, Saks Fifth Avenue, West Elm, and Bonobos to modernize the experience and increase the profitability of their brick and mortar business.