Testing Technology in Tottenham Court Road

In the latest of my occasional store analysis outings in association with Shoppertrak, I visit one of my old haunts in London, checking on the some of the huge hi-fi and technology stores in the capital’s main street for technology addicts to see if their stores are as cutting edge as their products.  I include some independent stores as well as one that would probably be familiar to everyone.  The results surprised me and point to a number of areas where some old fashioned personal service wouldn’t go amiss amongst all the impressive gadgetry.   

Whilst visiting most of the major mobile phone retailers in Tottenham Court Road in preparation for my last Undercover Analyst post, I found myself drawn into a trip down memory lane as I eyed some of the older technology stores in the area.

As I said in my previous post, back in the 90s if you wanted the latest slab of shiny consumer technology there really was no better place to come. I was a frequent visitor. In fact it was only a few years ago that I switched from a TV I bought there 25 years ago, and that was only because of the digital switchover. I like to get value for money out of my purchases!

Everything had changed of course, as you’d expect in the world of modern gadgetry, but many of the stores had a familiar layout and a good deal of the sales pitch was pretty much the same as it had been in the days of tower systems and VHS.

Having just taken notes on some of the most cutting edge gizmo stores on the market, I thought it would be good to see how the more traditional technology retailers were doing, if there is such a thing as ‘traditional’ technology.

The first store I visited store predominantly sold Hi-Fi gear. I’m not sure if calling it that is now an anachronism, but I enquired about a sound system anyway. The sales adviser seemed very knowledgeable and had an impressive amount of product knowledge to call on. Buoyed by this initial encounter, I asked if I could perhaps have a demo of the system and the salesman’s face lit up. All I had to do, he explained, was to visit their demo area on the third floor where someone would be happy to help me.

Missing Link

This is where the experience took a disappointing nose dive. I wasn’t escorted to the demo area, I was just told where it was. This seemed like serious missing link in the service chain to me. Most stores, most notably the large supermarkets, now train their staff to take anyone who enquires about a product to where they can find it. Just sending someone risks that person not finding it or changing their mind in transit. It also gives a rather offhand impression of the service model.

Just pointing someone in the general direction is acting like a signpost. Leading someone to the product is a positive interaction with the customer and keeps them engaged. Moreover, in this case I was supposedly interested in an expensive sound system, not a bogoff on a tin of baked beans. It could have been a very costly mistake for this store. My maxim to staff is always ‘guide, don’t point’.

Once on the third floor it took a while to catch the eye of the assistant, who apparently had no idea I was on my way. Even a phone call from the ground floor warning them of my impending arrival was clearly too much to ask. A totally cack-handed way to operate a sales handover in my opinion, and something they really should work on.

The demo itself went well and I felt the adviser really knew his stuff. But the way I’d had to pretty much drive the process to get there myself left me feeling disengaged by this point. I think, had I been a real customer I might not even had got that far.

Overall though, not a bad store, but some serious service issues to deal with.

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ShopperTrak says – How are customers moving around the store? Gaining an understanding of how shoppers are moving around the store can help to ensure that shoppers don’t miss out on any stock as well as making the most of product placement.

I.e. retailers may find that customers are regularly coming in to the store to purchase small items such as headphones but that they are experiencing a high abandonment rate once shoppers realise that these items are located on the third floor. By moving headphones to the till area, the retailer may see a boost in conversion rates.

Retailers can also look to data to monitor the success rate of implementing new changes, i.e. staff radios. I.e. did conversion go up when staff began using radios to communicate across different floors? They can then tweak these changes accordingly.

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My next visit was to a well known electronics supplier. This store sells a variety of less well known brands but is a seriously great place to come for anything from a walkie-talkie to a GPS enabled swizzle stick. I have to admit I could, and probably have, spent hours browsing amazing gadgets that I’d never heard of whilst desperately trying to find a justification for buying. Luckily for my bank balance I usually fail.

Plain Vanilla

Having said that, it’s a bit plain vanilla in terms of shop layout and fit-out. It looks like the store was built around off-the-shelf shop fittings bought in a clearance warehouse at the end of the 1990s. I’m sure that wasn’t the case, but it was not exactly what you’d called ‘retail theatre’. Slightly incongruous for a shop selling up-to-the-minute products, but maybe they think the merchandise is exciting enough.

The stock displays were neat enough and everything was easy to browse. Staff were around and someone from the back of the store shouted across to me to ask if I needed any help.

To me that’s an approach that’s about as contemporary as the shelving was in the store. If you’re going to engage with a customer, do it face to face and with some commitment. Throwing your voice across the shop is also throwing away a golden opportunity to turn that interaction into a sales opportunity. In many respects it would be better to say nothing than do that. Having come from several stores with a much more focussed customer service ethos, even though it was probably poorly executed in some cases, this seemed like a bit of a throw-back.

Again not a bad store overall, but still lacking that certain something.

My final visit was to a store that today stands pretty much unchallenged in the landscape of UK technology retail today. It’s my policy in these articles not to name stores, but I’m sure it won’t take too much of a leap of imagination to work out the name. It houses a number of concessions and has a wide range of different brands on offer. Indeed it recently merged with another equally ubiquitous high street retailer.

There were a lot of staff about, but oddly many of them appeared to be cleaning staff. They were adorned with Hi-Viz jackets and were busy with cleaning tools. It seemed to me to be an odd time to be cleaning as the store was fairly full of potential customers. I’m assuming it was an outsourced company, but if it had been my store I wouldn’t have wanted to see them on the shop floor during trading hours.

There were numerous sales staff floating about, but it was difficult to get their attention. One of them seemed to deliberately avoid my gaze. I have to say I’ve had this experience in the past in these stores, and it was a behaviour they were at one time famous for. I understood it had been ‘trained-out’ of staff after an extensive re-branding effort a few years ago. Maybe this guy had missed the seminar.

Technical Problems

Many of the products on sale had a demo facility, which was a great idea, except for the fact that most of them appeared not to be working that day. When I finally did manage to capture a member of staff they explained that they’d been having technical problems, so perhaps I just picked the wrong time. Once we did get some of the demonstrations going they were generally a good sales tool.

I must admit I wasn’t particularly impressed after my visit and did notice a customer satisfaction button by the door on the way out. I’ve noticed these are becoming more popular now in larger chain stores, although I suspect the data they provide will be about as qualitative as badly implemented footfall counters. On this occasion it was placed slightly behind the door so I’m not sure many customers would have seen it anyway. Perhaps an indication that the store staff were not particularly keen to see them use it.

I’d previously seen improvements in this company’s customer service performance so it was a surprise to see they’d started to slip back into their old ways. Perhaps having less competition leads to complacency.

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ShopperTrak says:

• It would be interesting to use heat maps or beacons to map out key areas and understand which concessions are drawing in shoppers. By doing so, retailers can gain insights into the customer journey and how shoppers are moving around the store, as well as store layout, staff allocation etc.
• An understanding of your busiest periods means that retailers can use their least busy times to carry out staff training and cleaning for example.

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“Take me to your checkout!”

So there you have it. Smart gizmos not always being sold in a particularly smart way, which considering we’re talking about highly advanced products seems something of an irony.

I was at a conference a few months ago where the concept of robot salespeople was being pitched. It’s not as outlandish as you might think either. These robo-shop-assistants were based on a Japanese designed personal helper droids intended as home help for infirm people. Apparently they cost around a thousand dollars and are easily re-tasked to the world of retail. Maybe we’ll see these in our high street stores in years to come, and I think it would be a good bet that the first place would be in a technology store.

I’m not sure if that says more about retailers than it does about the evolution of artificial intelligence. But as I saw on my travels around mechanical Mecca, there may well come a time when it will be difficult to tell which gadgets are for sale and which are doing the selling. In some instances I don’t think that would be a bad thing.

For more information and insights from Shoppertrak, click the logo below and subscribe to my blog for future posts from The Undercover Analyst.  I could be coming to your store soon!

The Undercover Analyst – Checking the Numbers on Mobile Phone Stores

It’s time for another of my regular checks on high street operators in association with retail analysis experts ShopperTrak. This time I’m looking at mobile phone stores, a category we’ve seen explode over the past 10-15 years and one which has come to dominate our high streets. As always these reports are written after actual visits to selected un-named stores and will focus on areas such as store design, operation, staff management and customer service.

Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m a bit of a gadget freak.

I spent my youth dreaming of the kinds of gizmos that now populate our everyday lives. Star Trek style talking computers, Blade Runner video phones, Batman’s wrist worn communicator and, not forgetting, jet packs.

The last item on my list might still be a way off, but the others are all with us now in ways that most of us have come to regard as just a normal part of our ordinary lives. Those of us who can remember the days before you could stand in the middle of nowhere and to speak to someone on the other side of the world, simply by reaching into your pocket, probably won’t appreciate how mind blowing that still is. The fact that such technology has now settled in as part of the mundanity of every high street might have something to do with that.

These stores sell us brain meltingly complicated technology in much the same way as we’d pick up a packet of kidney beans in our local supermarket. In fact, in many cases, we could do both under the same roof. It’s technology Jim, but not as we knew it!

For this outing into the new frontier of consumer electronics I chose a road I once frequented on a regular basis looking for the latest in Hi-fi and sound equipment. Tottenham Court road in the 80s and 90s was THE place to come for the latest sleek sound system at knock down prices. Part of the process in those days was to visit every store looking for the best deal, before playing each shop off against one another. I have to admit that’s a bargaining technique that stood me in good stead in future years in business.

It was therefore saddening to see upon my return, that my choice of electronics stores these days was not as diverse as it once was It is predominantly populated with mobile phone stores, with only a few of the store fascias I remember from the old days.

I chose to visit three mainstream mobile phone shops to make direct comparisons between them. As they are all selling exactly the same hardware, with only notional differences in tariff offers, it was quite easy to gauge how they stacked up against each other.

The Price is Wrong

The first store was arranged all on one floor so my arrival was easily visible to all the staff, who immediately came over and spoke to me. I could also see that other customers were being dealt with throughout the store. Thankfully, there wasn’t too much of the hard sell which can be common in similar stores.

There was some impressive up-selling going on from the outset as the store manager who had approached me enquired about the status of my current mobile contract. Interesting that these days no one ever assumes that you wouldn’t have a mobile phone!

Mobile phone stores are now gradually diversifying into ancillary products and this particular store had a good range of headphones, presumably for those who also use their phones as MP3 devices. I enquired about the price on a pair that caught my eye and this is where the fun began.

The price displayed said £160 which both I and the sales adviser felt was a tad on the high side. On checking the computer it turned out he was right, the actual price was an infinitely more reasonable £25! Neatly proving the advantage that a human has over a machine generated price tag. It also suggests that this company might need to double check their merchandising procedures! Regular shop floor and merchandising audits have been a feature of my own stores and really should be carried out at least once a month. This neatly demonstrates why.

Overall though it, was a very neat and well run store. A good experience.

ShopperTrak Says – Using retail analytics, it is possible to measure the success of different initiatives, including new customer service programmes and training to make sure your sales staff devote their full attention to engaging with the customer at the right time.

Wall of Death

In store number two, customer interaction seemed like it was top of the agenda as I was greeted by a designated staff member from behind a podium at the entrance.

Sadly, this seemed to be the limit of the initiative as I was then confronted by a human wall consisting of 4 sales staff in a line, each chatting to each other and apparently oblivious to my presence.

This was a store that appeared to know what was needed but was supremely bad at delivering it. Displays were messy and in desperate need of a spring clean. In one corner I noticed a seating area with charging points for phones, presumably there to increase dwell time in the store. A good idea in theory, although the floor was grubby and the chairs looked like they’d seen better days. There were no magazines or other literature for me to read and the idea of any refreshments being available seemed a forlorn hope.

ShopperTrak says – It’s crucial that retailers look at labour allocation in order to strike a happy balance between the number of customers entering the store and the availability of staff on hand to greet and serve. Shopper traffic data provides retailers with their truest measurement of sales opportunity, which is key to effectively scheduling labour. By scheduling the appropriate amount of employees and the best sales staff with the hours of greatest opportunity, it is possible to turn labour from an expense into a strategic sales tool. This includes including identifying when there is too many staff on the shop floor. During our visit, staff far outweighed customers.

I made a hasty exit past the still self absorbed sales staff and headed for store number 3.

Open For Business

On first appearance, my final mobile phone store looked like it was going to be a bit of a wash out. Visual merchandising was pretty weak with a painfully sparse window display seemingly based on an odd cardboard box theme.

Once inside, however, it was a completely different story – an effective layout with lots of opportunities to interact with products and plenty of customers being attended to on a one to one basis. There seemed to be a high number of staff and no one appeared to be kept waiting – a great result! The displays were clear and informative and would have kept me amused for a fair while even if there was a short delay in service.

I noticed there was a downstairs area so I headed off to investigate, finding a similar seating area to the one in the previous store. But that’s where the similarity ended. The execution of the idea here was far more accomplished. There were the same plug in stations for your phone or laptop, but the area was clean with a designer look sofa, plenty of literature to read a tea and coffee station, water cooler and even a well stocked fruit bowl! It looked like a place you could have stayed for lunch, although you might eventually have to buy something for the sake of appearances!

The final touch was the availability of meeting rooms adjacent to the seating area. Not something I’ve ever seen in a store before, but somehow it seemed to fit with the general ethos. It had a real ‘open for business’ feel and I’m sure this area could generate spin-off sales of their technology products. Something other similar stores could learn from.

ShopperTrak says – The break-out area was a real nod to the ‘retailtainment’ trend, going beyond just selling to shoppers, to entertain , and inspire them by providing the best possible shopping experience. In this case, the lounge was the perfect opportunity to say, ‘come on in, stay a while’. By encouraging shoppers to spend longer in the store, retailers increase the likelihood of shoppers making a purchase.

However, the measure of a good window display cannot be underestimated., if potential clients do not feel the pull to come into the there is no amount of entertainment inside the store that will help drive new sales, Being aware of pass by traffic peaks and having attractive window displays can really boost draw rates and as a consequence new sales.

This more positive experience marked the end of my survey of the mobile operators. Overall they seemed a mixed bag. Some good ideas in terms of design and add-on services, but in a few cases this wasn’t backed up by staff with enough engagement for my liking. The other interesting aspect was the expansion into other categories which seems to be a common factor in many retail sectors these days. With the merger of Dixons and Carphone Warehouse still fresh in our minds I wonder how long we’ll continue to see mobile phone stores on the high street dedicated only to this one narrow aspect of technology.

In an attempt to answer that question, I’ll be taking a look at how the wider technology sector is faring in my next report in a few weeks time. So don’t touch that dial folks!  For more information on ShopperTrak’s full range of analytic services by click the link below.

The Undercover Analyst – Luxuriating In Manchester

As part of a project with retail analytics experts ShopperTrak, I’m continuing my look at the retail landscape in areas around the UK and sharing some insights through regular blog posts.  Taking a broad cross section of market sectors and visiting unnamed stores, I comment on how they fare on specific operational areas I and ShopperTrak regard as being key to a successful and customer responsive store.  I’m looking for good and bad practices, innovative ideas and exemplars for all of us to either follow or avoid in our own businesses.  This time I’ve been looking at high end luxury stores in the centre of Manchester.

One could define luxury as any product that isn’t an essential. In that sense anything other than one pair of shoes at a time would be seen as excessive, unless of course you’re a centipede. But of course we all buy things we want rather than need, and in that sense we all indulge in luxury to some extent.

Having run a chain of jewellery stores for the past 20 years, it seemed like a natural step for me to look at this sector for the next of my occasional blogs in association with ShopperTrak, and for this outing I chose the city centre in Manchester on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Since the horrendous bombing of 1996 which wiped out nearly a third of its retail space, there has been a positive renaissance of retail offer in the city. Luxury stores are very well represented and I found a good range of mid to high end opulence to choose from. I went to three stores. Two within what has become a luxury enclave within the mainstream shopping locale, and one in the more business orientated sector.

I think I can speak with some authority on how luxury shopping should be done. It’s not really a complicated proposition. You provide a cosseting but inspiring atmosphere and you have on hand a team of well trained and well-presented staff that have all mastered the art of engaging with customers without pestering them. The final ingredient is to have a good range of aspirational products at the right price. It’s pretty much like any other retail proposition except maybe the price issue isn’t quite such an imperative.

Quick off the Mark

The first store I visited was that of an iconic British brand. Stock was principally aimed at women with what appeared to be an afterthought nod towards menswear.

Of late this company has been struggling somewhat which might be why the sales staff seemed so eager to see me. I was the only person in the shop at the time, and as a result, I was approached by 3 sales advisers inside 5 minutes. They were well presented and pleasant, but their patter sounded slightly scripted to me.

There’s nothing wrong with attentive staff, but you do need to give customers room to breathe. The rule with my own staff was always to greet customers when they entered the store and then leave them alone for at least a couple of minutes. There was a high ratio of staff to customers here though, so perhaps they needed to co-ordinate more.

In a luxury environment it’s easy to over-staff. Apple stores, for example, have a deliberate policy of no signage to encourage customers to ask for help. This works well but you have to be on top of your game in terms of availability of advisers. People paying these prices don’t like to queue!

The store layout was rather self defeating, and seemed to be largely making the best of a pretty lacklustre job. A stairwell that took you to the second floor was located very close to the entrance, which I imagine diverts a fair number of browsers away from the sales area on the ground floor. Also, considering this was a store obviously aimed at women, it seemed incongruous to me that their target demographic had to plod up a flight of stairs to get to the merchandise. Not a great strategic move and something I would have expected to have been re-modelled during the fit-out.

Visual merchandising was on the poor side, and there was no opportunity for direct digital interaction. One member of staff was toting an iPad, although it was unclear if this was for a customer service role, or just internal use.

Considering this company has recently invested heavily in omnichannel, it was odd that this didn’t seem to be heavily integrated into the store. One other peculiarity that struck me was the lack of in-store music. Something I would have thought would be de rigueur in any similar retail environment.

ShopperTrak says: The nature of the luxury sector means that the ratio of shoppers to staff can, on occasion, become unbalanced. Location based analytics can help retailers to identify their busiest periods, highlighting when there are too many – or too few – staff on the shop floor as a result. This helps teams to allocate resources effectively, ensuring that the customer is only greeted once. Each store has a unique DNA and knowing when to greet the customer depends largely on the nature of the store. Armed with this knowledge, retailers have the power to make decisions relevant to their own environment.

iPads are an increasingly important sales and transaction tool within the physical store, with staff now able to offer shoppers the opportunity to buy stock that may not be available in-store, there and then. Luxury retailers can measure the impact of in-store technology by carrying out test periods, tapping in to data to see what effect these periods are having on conversion rates. Brands can also use location based analytics to monitor the success of digital screens and displays by seeing how long customers are lingering in areas with digital features.

A New Dimension

The second store on my luxurious odyssey was only a short distance away from the first but it was like stepping into an entirely different dimension. It was obviously a fairly new fit out and had taken advantage of many of the contemporary twists now available. There was an impressive open aspect design, well thought out with a much more focussed approach to merchandising and display. This store showed just how much impact a well thought our environment can make to your experience, assuming you have the budget to spend.

Visual merchandising was well implemented with window displays cleverly arranged so that items in the window grabbed your attention and directed it towards matched displays further inside the store. This had the effect of drawing you instantly in. Digital was well integrated throughout, with screens showing footage of the merchandise featured in runway shows. You know you’d arrived at fashion central when you stepped into this store. These aspects also caught customer’s attention and increased general dwell times.

The fit out was heavily weighted towards experiential aspects that engaged you with the brand rather than pointing you towards specific products. It has that quintessentially unhurried atmosphere, enhanced by nice touches such as a chill-out area near the changing rooms, with sofas, magazines and hot drinks available. This echoes stores such as cycle Mecca Rapha, where customers are encouraged to simply hang out rather than being pressurised to buy.

Staff were equally laid back, but all seemed to be busy and focussed on key areas of the store. The location of sales advisers at any given point seemed strategic, so that they could move seamlessly from housekeeping activities to customer service when needed. I was approached after 3-4 minutes browsing – A much better timeframe for initial interaction. I felt like I could take my time, but someone would be available as soon as I need them.

Overall this store was an example of exactly how well a store can be laid out and operated, assuming money is no object.

ShopperTrak says: The shopping experience is constantly changing with the brick and mortar store no longer just somewhere to purchase products. Rather, it is now an environment in which to be inspired, entertained or just to relax, with the ‘retailtainment’ trend high on the agenda for much of the luxury sector.

The chill-out zone in this particular store is a fantastic example of this and a great initiative that encourages shoppers to spend substantial time in-store. However, it’s important that retailers monitor the success of these initiatives to see if they are driving more traffic to correlating zones, i.e. the changing rooms.

Location based analytics also enables retailers to analyse the optimal length of the in-store experience for each store location. For example, how long is the dwell time when it starts to negatively impact conversion rates? Longer dwell times are seen as a positive when the client is engaged and conversion rates are increasing, but when the conversion starts to drop it may mean that customers are spending too much time waiting or queuing for example.

Not a lot of help

My final outing was to another iconic bastion of the luxury sector.

In operational terms, one bad mark against them was that after being in the store for nearly 15 minutes, not a single sales adviser had spoken to me. This was also the smallest store I visited so there really was no excuse for the lack of attention, especially as I was the only person in there at the time. Perhaps I just didn’t look like their kind of customer.

In some ways being given the freedom to browse unmolested by staff was a blessing, but being completely ignored is just as bad as being bombarded with offers of help. It’s a perfect example of how important it is to get the balance right.

That said, the store itself was well appointed and had a good designer feel about it. The window display was impressive with some clever lighting effects. Merchandise in the store was placed across a number of different levels meaning that customers were encouraged to look up towards smaller items, whilst clothing was within easy reach lower down.

It seemed this store was aimed at local businesspeople browsing in their downtime, and in that sense the clothing offer and the environment were perfectly pitched to that market.

Certainly not a bad shop, but in my opinion not really hugely inspiring either. But then perhaps I’m not in their target demographic, which might also explain why none of their staff seemed to notice me.

ShopperTrak says: Window displays in this sector are often designed to be ‘showstoppers’ that reflect the opulence and fashion-forward approach so synonymous with luxury. It’s key that retailers measure the success of visual merchandising to understand the impact it’s having on draw rates, i.e. the number of people entering the store.

So a real triumvirate of an in-store experience. Something I’m itching to characterise as the good, the bad and the ugly, although that’s perhaps unfair to at least one of them. It was certainly an eye-opener in terms of the wide range of approaches to what is undoubtedly a narrow market sector. Some of the stores radiated an obvious nonchalance towards customer interaction, whereas others were falling over themselves to engage. From an experiential perspective I think stores number one and three could benefit from a proper independent mystery shopper report, with store number one needing a really fresh eye cast over the shop-floor design and customer experience perspective.

For my own part I saw some great ideas in shop number 2 that showed just how well things could be done, not just in the luxury market, but across the board. Factors that I’m sure will inform the way I approach such things in any future store environments I set up or advise on. Just like haute couture designs eventually filter down to the more mass market, we can all take aspects of these stores to use in our own businesses, even if we maybe can’t afford the full outfit.

Join me next time when I’ll be looking at electronics and tech retailers.  For more information on ShopperTrak’s full range of analytic services by click the link below.

The Undercover Analyst – How Focussed is Fashion on the High Street?

As part of a new project in association with retail analytics experts ShopperTrak, I’m going to be looking at the retail landscape in areas around the UK and sharing some insights through regular blog posts. Taking a broad cross section of market sectors and visiting specific but unnamed stores, I’m going to be commenting on how they fare on certain operational areas identified by ShopperTrak as being key to a successful and customer responsive store. I’ll be looking for good and bad practices, innovative ideas and exemplars for all of us to either follow or avoid in our own businesses.

My starting point was my home town of Oxford where I looked at mid-range high-street fashion. I’ve run stores in Oxford myself for nearly 20 years so I’ve witnessed the evolution of the local commercial environment at first hand.  The central retail core in Oxford is not much larger than you’d find in any town centre high street and consists of three main shopping thoroughfares, two indoor shopping centres and a covered market catering almost exclusively for independents. The main shopping street is Cornmarket, where most of this survey was based. Around six major stores were visited each with large footprints and each selling quite similar products to a broad demographic of fashion conscious 18-35 year olds.

Same difference

The overriding impression across most of the mainstream stores was that they all bought their shopfits from the same generic contractors. With the exception of one store, well themed towards their target customers, store layouts were similar to the point of duplication. It may be the nature of the beast that there are only so many ways you can support a clothes hanger, but shop-fittings generally looked like they were ‘off the shelf’, even though I’d imagine they weren’t.

Considering the size of some of these companies and their large marketing spend, brand identification in some stores was not as strong as it should have been. You could have dropped me blindfolded into any one of these stores and I’d have had a hard time telling you which one I was in.

ShopperTrak says : Differentiation is key. Location-based analytics provide retailers with the tools they need to understand the customer profile better, especially how shoppers are moving around the shop floor. As Ian points out, many stores have similar layouts but this is often down to guess work rather than knowing exactly how customers are moving through the store. Understanding the customer journey improves the overall experience so retailers need to have an accurate view of what is happening in store to help them measure effectiveness and constantly make improvements. By doing this we may see an end to all stores looking the same.

SALE SALE SALE!

Some of this anonymity might have been down to the fact that it appeared to be the height of the summer sales in the hallowed city with the main shopping areas a sea of red and white signage.

These days it’s quite difficult to pick out more than 2 consecutive weeks when someone isn’t on sale. The necessity to strip window and internal displays down to the bare-bones during such promotions left no real indication of how attractive the window dressing would normally be. Window displays have somewhat fallen out of favour in recent years, dividing between the bog standard or the eye-popping retail theatre. Of course your window display is supposedly the thing that draws customers inside your store, so outside of sale periods it has to be an important consideration.

ShopperTrak says : Traffic patterns change over different periods – particularly so during a sale. Even though the store feels busier retailers need to be sure that their promotions are actually driving the maximum number of customers to make a purchase. By analysing draw rates, or the ability to bring people into the store, retailers can measure whether promotions and merchandising are helping to entice their fair share of shoppers over the threshold versus competitors. If the draw rate begins to fall it’s a sure sign that visual merchandising is not working as effectively as it should be.

Location, Location, Location!

Internal store layouts seemed to be quite ad hoc. Most large stores use pre-planned merchandising plans produced by head office but none of them seemed particularly well suited to traffic flow in store, neither did they look like they could be responsive to dead zones that were fairly evident. For example, retail environment guru Paco Underhill has identified the area around your main entrance as the ‘landing pad’. His suggestion was that nothing should be placed here as customers are usually looking further into the store to see where they were headed. That seemed pretty much the case in one store where a large gondola had been plonked right in the entrance-way – it was pretty much ignored by everyone coming through the door.

The other obvious fail in my opinion was the tendency to place items that were in the sale at the back of the store. The intuitive logic is of course that this will draw customers further into the store, presumably wowing them with the non-promotional stock on the way. Personal experience combined with this particular visit tell me that this strategy is far too simplistic. Most customers looked straight to the rear of the store and bypassed everything else on their quest to get to the cheaper goodies. There may have been a method in this apparent madness. Keeping the sales hysteria at the back of the shop along with the associated mess and mis-matched merchandise may be a good move in some cases. Also I guess there’s a chance that customers may give the full priced stock another look on the way out after perhaps finding nothing in the sale to their liking.

In these days of eye-watering rent and rates, customer flow within a store is something that needs careful analysis. It’s really not something that can be left to gut instinct or rigidly pre-planned merchandising charts.

ShopperTrak says : Heat maps help retailers determine which areas customers are dwelling in and how long they spend there. This is crucial when analysing the effectiveness of merchandising and product placement. It also enables stores to re-invigorate quieter zones or analyse changes to determine the optimum store layout. On a micro-level retailers can examine conversion rates within specific areas of the store to gain a deeper level of insight into overall performance.

Customer experience

The general customer experience in all but one of the stores visited was pretty good. Stock displays were generally well maintained, apart from one rather tired looking mannequin that personally I’d have pensioned off years ago.

One of the more mainstream stores was a fairly recent opening so had the benefit of newer merchandising displays. This certainly gave a fresher look which was enhanced by the large airy feel of the store. They also had a good layout of stock with accessories and handbags at the front where they can be easily browsed and selected ‘on the hoof’, with items such as shoes at the rear where more time and interaction with staff would be required. However here, as with all the stores visited, staff engagement with customers was nigh on non-existent. Perhaps the labour intensive nature of the display floor meant that sales adviser’s saw maintenance of displays as a higher property than talking to customers.

Personally I’ve always trained my staff to aim at somewhere between intrusive and attentive. Many of the stores I visited could have benefited from tasking particular members of their sales teams with approaching customers on a one to one basis. There’s an obvious ethos with many of these stores that it’s self-service and customers only receive service when they ask for it. But these shops are semi-aspirational in design, they’re not supermarkets. They’re selling desirable fashion, not tins of sweetcorn. In that environment there’s nothing worse than leaving customers with the impression that interaction is bottom of the service remit.

In general though customer service was OK. We saw one person leave a pay point empty while a customer waited patiently, which wasn’t great, but as it was our fault for sending them on the hunt for a different size of a T-shirt that might be an unfair observation. It’s a dilemma for any sales adviser when there’s only one of you but two people who need your help. Perhaps something that could be sorted with better planning of staffing patterns.

ShopperTrak says : Understanding how many people are coming in to the store and which areas they’re dwelling in is a crucial reflection of the overall customer experience. Increasing the average time that shoppers spend in store helps to drive both conversion rates and average transaction sizes. If they stay in the shop longer it means they’re having a better experience.

Retailers can use interior analytics to measure dwell times, looking at whether shoppers are spending the right amount of time in the right areas, how staff are engaging with customers, how well queues are being dealt with or how effectively promotions are working.

Messy but busy

Only one store had significant queues at the pay point and this was also the store with the most untidy shop floor. Perhaps an indication that tidy displays don’t necessarily mean better sales. Or maybe the trashed shop floor just shows how busy they were. However they seemed to be a victim of their own success with at least one case of abandonment being observed as customers tired of waiting to part with their hard earned cash. Again I suspect proper deployment of staff and maybe a re-think on merchandising strategy would help with problems like this.

ShopperTrak says : Retailers need to have an accurate view of their power hours – i.e. their peak selling times. Only by having insight into this can they plan accordingly. Any re-stocking or staff breaks should take place outside of these times in order to ensure the most effective shopper to assistant ratio. Put simply, the fewer the staff available in store during peak traffic times the worse the customer experience is going to be.

As a first outing it was an interesting exercise for me. There are obvious compromises between function and form and many competing demands on the time of the floor staff. But there were many obvious improvements that could be made, perhaps with the assistance of some location-based analytics, particularly in terms of customer flow data and staff movements.

Join me next time when I’ll be looking at how luxury brands fare.  In the meantime you can check out ShopperTrak’s full range of analytic services by clicking the link below.