The three components to drive foot traffic

The retail sector is at a major turning point. While there is that ongoing battle with e-commerce, the bricks and mortar stores are on the lookout to provide various tech solutions to help drive customers to physical stores.

When we look at the physical components of a store it boils down to one simple entity: foot traffic. Implementing foot traffic is something that has been done for decades, but now there is technology afoot to enhance the traditional shopping experience we've got to find a suitable balance between old and new. What can we do to drive foot traffic to our stores? 

The first impression

One of the most important areas of foot traffic is about making that first impression. A welcoming environment needs to be created. While there are so many different components around, the simplest ones are usually the most effective.

Ensuring that the front of the store is equipped with eye-catching materials is crucial to ensuring that the general upkeep is maintained. While commercial door matting and entrance matting systems can help to bridge the gap between the sidewalk and the front door we must remember that there is no need to bombard the senses with flashy images and gimmicks.

A customer will always make a decision before they set foot in your store. This means that you need to target specific customers that align well with your brand but also encourage that welcoming aesthetic. 

Enhancing the in-store experience

We can use beacons to entice customers. While technology can mean that we all operate from a remote perspective, using push notifications to entice customers based on their proximity to the store can help infinitely. Using these beacons means that you can send appealing messages via audio, text, or video.

It's also important that by using beacons you can provide unique offers to entice a single person. You can also use beacons within specific areas of the store. This will help you to analyse a specific customer’s interest in an area of the store. For example, if you run a clothing store and the beacons have highlighted that more people are approaching the jackets on a specific day this can provide you with the analytics to potentially order more jackets.

Building the brand

Building the brand in terms of foot traffic is a lot harder to achieve but some of it is to do with the old-style marketing processes like email marketing. But you can use social media for the benefits of foot traffic. You can use social media to announce a specific sale that customers can only use if they mention the social media post. Rewarding engagement is a great way to encourage foot traffic but also nurtures a long-term relationship with the customer.

Foot traffic isn't a component relegated to the past. You can modernise the idea of enticing customers into a store. Foot traffic is still an important aspect of encouraging customers to buy from us. But as the modern customer is savvier we've got to be more subtle in our approaches to tempt them in.