How to Optimise Your Retail Point of Sale

The retail industry is constantly evolving. Whether it’s new technologies, customer behaviours or something else, your point of sale (POS) should reflect current industry trends and what your customers want and expect from your business. The point of sale refers to both your POS system and the customer-product interactions that happen at your cash desk.

When you optimise your POS, you’re making every transaction a more pleasant experience for your customers and your staff alike. This means increased profits, customer satisfaction and positive word-of-mouth that can transform your business for the better.

Below, let’s discuss how you can optimise your point of sale and the benefits these changes can bring to your company.

Inventory Management

As anyone who’s worked in retail knows, inventory management can be a time-consuming manual task. Unreliable inventory practices can lead to poor customer experiences, decreased revenues and shortages.

Having a POS system that comes with a built-in stock management system can change all this, allowing your stock levels to be synced as you make sales. This makes tracking your products much easier, and allows you to make more informed decisions regarding future purchases and sales.

By managing stock across various locations or channels using one centralised system, you can quickly master your inventory and make the most complicated of processes quick, simple and easy.

Displays

Your POS is one of the most high-traffic areas of your store, so why not take advantage of that? Display stands of all shapes and sizes can be the perfect opportunity to encourage impulse purchases and drive up your items per receipt and average transaction value. Items that may not have been on your customer’s shopping list but then trigger their impulse to make a snap purchase are perfect for your display stands, such as bottled water, lip balm, socks and snacks.

POS displays can also be used to push current promotional items or current discounts. Smaller displays will be right at home on top of your cash desk, with the signage capturing your customer’s attention and encouraging even more impulse purchases.

Customer Management

While getting new customers to walk through your doors is a great achievement, making sure they come back is where the real challenge begins. Modern POS systems help you look after your customers like never before and can be a driving factor in your store’s repeat business.

By allowing you to store customer information and build up their profiles, you can maintain higher levels of engagement and loyalty, track their purchase history, keep an eye on their account balances and more. Some systems also let you offer loyalty programs, allowing you to reward your top customers and keep them coming back time and time again.

Apply Sales and Promotions Automatically

If your store regularly runs sales and promotions, then you need a POS system that can keep up with your marketing efforts. By automatically applying sale prices and discounts, you speed up the sales process and leave less room for errors that can leave a bad taste in your customer’s mouths. After all, quicker sale times mean happier customers, so invest in a POS system that makes it easy to implement any in-store offers.

Insights

In order for any business to be successful, you need to have the right data at your fingertips. Insights into your sales, customer patterns and product movement will allow you to make better decisions for your business that have a positive impact on your profits, your staff and much more.

With the right POS system, there’s very little that you can’t do. We recommend looking for a POS system that can perform the following reports:

• Stock levels
• Inventory
• Product performance
• Sales per group or customer
• Sale summaries

While optimising your POS to be the best it can require an investment of time, effort, and money, in the long run, it almost always pays off. Having an advanced POS system makes satisfying your customers easier than ever, and well- placed and stocked display stands are one of the most effective drivers of impulse purchases you’ll find. All this can lead to a happier, healthier business, and results that you can be proud of.