Retail: increase your sales thanks to hot spots.
Detecting the hot spots of your store and developing trade marketing strategies focused on them will guarantee your commercial success.
We are constantly looking for different strategies that provide us with favorable results in terms of increasing our sales and productivity, however, it is not just about having a creative mind to develop innovative plans; many times we just have to observe and analyze. By studying our current situation, we will obtain a map of opportunities and strengths that, when duly identified, will show us the path to follow to achieve that increase in our sales that we long for.
One of the most important aspects to take into account within your store and that will give you favorable results if you make decisions based on it is the hot spots. Do you want to know what is it about? - Keep reading.
Hot spots
When we talk about "hot spots", we mean the places in your store that are most attractive and frequented by customers. Generally, they are given in points that offer high exposure to buyers by presenting the items with the highest demand, the best sellers, promotional, discount, seasonal and high profitability.
Depending on the nature, size and layout of the store, hot spots may be located in different areas. For example, it can be located near the entrance, where the passing crowd enters the shop or in shop windows, demonstration areas, etc. These areas provide good sales opportunities and knowing how to identify them offers you the possibility of creating strategies that will make your sales skyrocket.
How to identify them?
In general, customers follow a tour itinerary when they enter the store and depending on how the windows and their various departments are organized and distributed, they will behave in a way that generates cold (lower traffic) and hot areas within your store. Therefore, only by knowing which are those hot and cold spots in your store and studying customer behavior, it is possible to optimize the route and improve the experience.
As we explained before, the hot spots are the spaces in the store with the highest pedestrian traffic, these areas generate the most attention from customers and therefore should be used to display impulse purchase products, but alternated with those items that motivate the customer's visit.
Hot spots are classified into two types:
- Natural hot spots. They are those that are attractive due to the architecture of the store or the furniture.
- Artificial hot spots. They are those that have been created, as their name indicates, artificially through the use of decoration techniques, lighting, among others. That is, they are those sectors where visual merchandising is used as a tool to increase sales.
To properly order products inside a store, you need to know which areas are cold and which are hot, and to achieve this easily and effectively, the key is technology. Currently there are technological tools designed specifically to help retailers in this task, such as QuartzSales, which allows us to know everything related to the point of sale in real time, providing us with valuable information that will help us determine the most important aspects from our store.
What to do once I have identified the hot spots of my store?
Retailers can place access points, routes in a store where displays are in view of shoppers. This helps to achieve special attention and increase sales within the POS. The following are visual merchandising ideas to make the most of your store's hot spots and thus increase your sales:
- Identify the hot spots of your store: When identifying the hot spot for a retail store, you must decide which products will be added on the shelves to encourage their exposure and sale.
You can select a maximum of three items (related to each other) as the main product and others that do not sell as much but are still in the same category. For example, bread can be placed with jam or butter. If your store sells more bread and the place where it is placed is your hot spot, add the jam and butter and you will see how the sale of these products increases as well.
- Keep shelves as stocked as possible: When items run out, be sure to restock or replace them with other items based on customer tastes, market trends, and the season.
This makes retail displays look alive, fresh and impactful. Also, remember to change dated displays, products, and shelf signage as seasons or promotions end.
- Encourage cold spot areas: Cold spots are the areas least visited by customers, resulting in low sales. Keeping aisles as wide as possible to draw customers' attention by placing discount labels on POS shelves is a great way to bring them to life.
- Counter areas: These are a great place for last minute reminders. Place products that customers may have forgotten, seasonal products, candy, small toys or children's products and other items here. This will help encourage impulse purchases and unplanned purchases in your store.
There are thousands of techniques that you can apply to boost your sales, however, if you do not know detailed information about your POS and target audience, you will not be successful. For this reason, it is important that you include QuartzSales in your trade marketing strategy, since it is a tool for planning, organizing, managing and monitoring the sales funnel of each business, with customizable features according to the region, country , industry and objectives set and that will undoubtedly provide you with the information you need to achieve your business goals.
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