How to enage customers in a in bricks and mortar retail

As bricks and mortar retailers encounter greater competition or slowing sales growth, they need to consider whether their foot traffic is engaged or passing and how better to engage your customers.

Foot Traffic

Like water & food, foot traffic & product are the lifeblood of a bricks & mortar retail business. You can break foot traffic down into engaged or passing. If the foot traffic is not engaged, it is passing. Every business owner has to ask themselves these two questions:

Is my traffic engaged or is it passing? &
If they are passing, what do I have to do to get them to stop?

I have seen endless homeware & furniture stores put cake domes, bowls or platters in their windows or on display with nothing on them. It often fails to engage the customer because it’s like looking in their own kitchen cupboards.

Engaging the Customer

Engaging the customer means relating to the customer. Placing a cake beneath the dome, some fruit in the bowl or some pastries on the plate engages with a core human necessity: Food.

Displaying an object in an alternative way can also be engaging. Put some flowers in the cake dome. Float some tea lights on water in the bowl & display a photo on the platter, are all ways to capture foot traffic attention.

Planting creative seeds adds value to consumers. It is this value that engages the customer & draws them into your store.

Don’t Get Defensive

Now the defensive minded retailer might feel I am forgetting the new season servingware is not being displayed effectively if we cover it with visual merchandising. Merchandising some pieces in a display achieves the desired result. Engaging & displaying.

Conclusion

Visual merchandising enhances product appearance without detracting from it. So while the product has some material appeal, the merchandising cuts through to the emotional attachment. Hence if the product is appealing then you have fulfilled one retail lifeblood condition. Creating & fulfilling an emotional attachment will meet the second, by engaging the foot traffic & creating an environment that is more likely to end in a sale.