How To Drive Sales - Simplify Your Checkout Process

By Author: Hugh Springer
Total Articles: 4762
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It's a fundamental of business-sales are what make things happen. Without sales, you'd have shelves full of products just sitting there, sales people lazing about, and checkout registers standing dormant. It's a natural assumption therefore that in order to grow, or even just to sustain a business, you need to cultivate your sales revenues. There are hundreds of ways in which to drive sales, but few people consider how a few simple operational factors can affect sales. Your checkout process is one of these functional areas.

How an Inefficient Checkout Process can Hinder Sales

In the modern era, we have become an impatient generation. We hate waiting for things. It simply isn't an efficient use of our time. Time after all is a valuable commodity in our modern busy lives. For most people, standing in a line is something they will avoid at all costs, especially at supermarkets and retail stores. Some go as far as paying people to shop for them so that they do not need to deal with the inconvenience. Others simply shop online and have the goods conveniently delivered to their home or office. Streamlining the checkout ...
... process whether online or in a retail store will eliminate the time that people have to wait. If customers know that they can process goods efficiently through your store, they will be more inclined to purchase from you on a regular basis.

How Staff Training and Systems can Help or Hinder Sales

We have all experienced that sinking feeling when the person in front of us at the supermarket has an item that is incorrectly priced or when the cashier has accidentally duplicated an item. We hear the bell and see the register light flashing and we know that this is going to be a lengthy process. What if in your retail store, it wasn't a lengthy process? What if the supervisor was there in a flash and the teller knew exactly how to credit the item? Wouldn't that make for a pleasant change? If you exceed customer expectations in terms of service, it is a sure way to drive up sales. A key way of achieving this is by not only selecting a checkout system that fits your business but also by training staff on how to use it efficiently. When selecting and setting up your checkout system, ask yourself some important questions. How easy is the system to operate? How easy is it to train staff to use it? Does the service provider have a staff training facility? The more efficient your system, and the better trained your staff, the easier it will be for you to drive sales in your store.

Keep Things Simple to Help you Drive Sales

Aside from becoming impatient, the average person is also pretty lazy. We are so used to convenience that anything that requires too much effort is simple discarded. This is particularly relevant for an online retail type store. If a customer has to go through more than three or four steps to complete a transaction, they may just decide that it's more effort than it's worth and simply look elsewhere for the product. It is understandable that as an online processor you need certain bits of information from clients. But put yourself in their shoes. Think convenience, efficiency, and easy-to-understand processes when it comes to designing your checkout system. The simpler the process, the more it will drive sales and help grow your business.

Selecting a Checkout System that Will Help you Drive Sales

Most retail transactions are paid for by credit card regardless of whether they are online or in an actual retail store. Having a checkout system that integrates with the payment authorization payment system is a great way to improve the efficiency and therefore drive sales. Ensure that the system can accept a wide variety of credit cards and that it can grant immediate authorization. Select a floor limit that is at a reasonable level with your average transaction so that manual authorizations for high-value transactions are the exception rather than the norm. This will ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in processing payment.

Keeping the customer happy is the foundation for driving sales. Your marketing and advertising strategies can do much to attract new customer; however, if your operations systems are not efficient, you will not keep the new customers for very long. Customers remember the service and sales experience long after they have purchased the item. Ensuring an efficient checkout system is a key element to driving sales.
About Author:
At Card Processing Pros.com we provide credit card processing and debit card processing, literally setting up hundreds of clients per month to process card payments for storefront, Internet and phone/mail order-based businesses. We also offer services in electronic check and gift card processing. Visit online today.