57% of holiday shoppers have already begun

Photo from merchandisingmatters.com

By Laura Heller

Anyone looking for more proof that holiday shopping begins earlier has some new statistics to cite: 56.6 percent of those celebrating the holidays had begun shopping by early November, up from 54.4 percent last year and up further from the 49 percent who had started by this time in 2008, the first time the National Retail Federation asked the question.

It's the highest percentage seen in that timeframe, according to the NRF's Consumer Holiday Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights and Analytics. Some 21 percent of shoppers began before October, according to a recent Brand Keys survey.

"Thanksgiving weekend shopping has evolved tremendously over the past few years and can no longer be seen as the 'start' of the holiday season, though there's no question it's still important to millions of holiday shoppers and retailers of all shapes and sizes," said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. "There is a real sea change happening in retail when it comes to the how, when, where and why of holiday shopping. Consumers today are looking for great prices and value-add promotions earlier than ever before, and retailers have answered these demands in several different ways already this holiday season."


Younger shoppers are among the busiest early in the season. Nearly 65 percent of 25 to 34-year-olds and 62 percent of 35 to 44-year-olds say they have already started shopping.

 "While there are many 'Type A' holiday shoppers who love to get an early start on their wish lists, it's also likely some of the early shopping we've seen has been in the form of 'self-gifting,' and there's no question millennials love treating themselves to something when the price is right," said Pam Goodfellow, principal analyst and consumer insights director for Prosper. "And with Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday still to come, holiday shoppers of all ages are still in for a treat when it comes to unbeatable promotions."


 Hot gift items this year include apparel and accessories (60 percent); books, CD's and DVDs (46 percent); and toys (41 percent). One in five will buy jewelry, and 30.5 percent will spend on food or candy.


 And for the first time, the number of shoppers who intend to buy gift cards has declined: 56.3 percent plan to buy cards, down from 60 percent last year, despite gift cards being the most requested gift item, according to NRF.


 Thus far in the season, retailers are getting high marks from shoppers when it comes to promotions. Slightly more than 40 percent rank retail promotions as excellent or good, and another 34.8 percent said they were average.


 Retailers' attempts to reach millennials with more targeted messaging and promotions appear to be working as well. Nearly 59 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds and 54.5 percent of 25 to 34-year-olds agree retailers' deals have either been excellent or good.
To View Original Article: http://www.fierceretail.com/story/57-holiday-shoppers-have-already-begun/2015-11-13

Make Your Website Research Ready with a Brands Page

By Brian Ewing

According to a recent study, 78% of shoppers used the internet for research during the holiday season last year. Your customers are making their lists and checking them twice…online. Even if your business isn’t e-commerce, you have an opportunity to make an impact on sales with an online presence.

What Are Consumers Researching on Store Websites?

Shopping during the holiday season is stressful. Not only are consumers trying to find the perfect gifts for loved ones, they’re fighting the crowds and calendar.
Planning is key to make the most of shopping trips. Customers plot out their course ahead of time, based on what gifts are available where. As a small business, it’s crucial to let customers know the brands and products you carry to become part of their shopping schedule.

Your Store Website & the Importance of a Brands Page

A dedicated brands page on your website is the best way to give consumers and search engines an idea of what you carry in-store. This is critical for SEO ranking and holiday research. Start by listing your most popular brands and continue expanding until you have a complete collection. A great way to organize the page is to display your brands’ logos alphabetically. See this perfect example from our subscriber, Pizazz Studio.

Beyond the Brands Page

If you’d like to take your website a step further, create separate pages for each of your major brands. Display the most popular items for the season, so consumers can quickly see you not only carry the brand, but the product they want. If you’re not selling online, make sure to place a CTA (call-to-action) message on each page asking the customer to contact the store for up-to-date inventory information. Lastly, make the logos on your brands page click-through links to the new product pages for an easy navigation experience.
Use your website to drive more sales, even if you don’t have e-commerce! Create a brands page to showcase your products and let holiday shoppers find you!


To View Original Article:  http://www.snapretail.com/make-your-website-research-ready-with-a-brands-page/

What devices are shoppers choosing when they shop online?

Last year (2014) was a historic year for mobile. For the first time, according to a number of sources, access to digital content via mobile devices overtook access via "fixed assets" — desktop and laptop devices.

While the use of tablets and smartphones has skyrocketed in recent years, the big quandary for marketers has been figuring out why it's taking so long for mobile buying behavior to follow suit. Certainly, mobile shopping is not accelerating at the same rate as general digital media, but according to a study conducted by Bronto and Ipsos, the device preferences of online U.S. shoppers is indeed evolving — and the trends reveal clues as to the future of mobile shopping and buying.

In the early 2015 study, online shoppers were asked about the devices they own and how they use them, with results broken out by gender, age and U.S. region.

Overall, in terms of device ownership, desktop and laptop computers continue to be most prevalent in the homes of online shoppers. And yet desktop and laptop ownership declined by 4 percent and 2 percent respectively year-over-year. Meanwhile, in 2015, both tablets and smartphones breached the 50 percent ownership threshold for the first time. Smartphone ownership jumped 12 percent from the previous year and tablet ownership grew 13 percent.

For many marketers, the most useful findings from the study may relate to the contrasts in ownership and usage by age group.

In terms of ownership, laptops are clearly the most prevalent device for shoppers under 65, while those 65 and older favor desktops (72 percent own them), with laptops close behind (63 percent). After laptops, the next most owned device for shoppers under 40 is a smartphone. In fact, in the 18-29 age group, 77 percent own smartphones compared with 43 percent of seniors.

And yet the 65 and older set are by no means resisting the mobile movement. The number of seniors who say they own tablets jumped from 35 percent in 2014 to 41 percent this year, and smartphones went from 26 percent ownership to 43 percent.

The sweeping behavioral changes brought about by mobile tech, however, have not yet carried through to the shopping and buying habits of U.S. consumers. According to the study, laptops and desktops are still strongly preferred as the primary device for shopping and buying across all ages.
Overall, 63 percent of those surveyed prefer to buy with desktops and 62 percent prefer laptops. That contrasts with just 10 percent for smartphones and 7 percent for tablets.

Smartphone and tablet preferences, understandably, are strongest for those under 40, with smartphones the more commonly used of the two. Twenty-three percent of online shoppers ages 18-29 prefer shopping on a smartphone, and one in five prefer shopping on a tablet.

  

Although the migration to mobile shopping and buying may seem glacially slow to marketers, it appears inevitable. As generations, young and old, integrate mobile into every aspect of their lives, seamless mobile shopping is becoming an expectation. As mobile payment methods gain adoption and designers optimize the mobile user experience, mobile shopping and buying stats will no doubt catch up with device ownership. The writing is on the wall.

To View Original Article: http://www.retailwire.com/tip/1365/what-devices-are-shoppers-choosing-when-they-shop-online

Top 5 Mistakes Brick-And-Mortar Retailers Make That Hurt Their Business

By: Donna Knight, Business Analyst

By now, most retailers know that an increasing number of shoppers are buying online. Does this mean that offline businesses should be afraid? Of course not. There are places where you can still see shopping malls with full parking lots and lines of people at the register waiting to check out. The prevalence of online shopping simply means that brick-and-mortar businesses cannot afford to continue running their business the same way they did 10+ years ago.

As a point of sale consultant, I have worked with retail businesses for 15 years, and I still see old and new businesses making the same mistakes other businesses did over a decade ago. Some of these mistakes include:

1. No Internet Presence: I am always surprised when I come across a well-established business that does not have a web site. Even if you don't want to sell products online, you should at least have a web site that touts your address and phone number, what products and services you offer, and pictures of your store. Many people, like myself, research brick-and-mortar stores online before they actually travel there. And if you don’t want to sell online, you might want to consider whether there are people in other states who are looking for what you sell. They may not have products like yours anywhere near them. You could be leaving money on the table by not selling online. No matter what you decide, you should at least have a simple web site to let potential customers know you’re right there in their neighborhood. 
   
2. Using Outdated Cash Registers: The fact is cashiers can make more sales in a shorter period of time with a computerized point of sale system than they can with a traditional cash register. In addition, the reporting functionality of cash registers, if they have any, are no match for those of even the most basic point of sale system. 
   
3. Little Or No Security Measures In Place: I’m sure your employees appreciate the fact that you put complete trust in them, but no one knows who is dishonest until merchandise starts disappearing without sales receipts to justify their absence. There are multiple security measures you could be using, including:
   
   
   1. Installing security camera systems that not only show you what a salesperson was doing behind the counter, but also what receipt the salesperson was working on at a specific moment in time.
      
   2. Assigning an individual username and password to each employee so you can track their sales or other activity when using a computer.
      
   3. Exercising strict control over what employees can do in your business software.
       
4. Not Collecting Customer Information: One of the things that successful companies do is follow up with their customers. I recently bought a new car. I got a survey from the sales person who sold the car to me and from the car manufacturer. This company clearly cares about the quality of their service since they follow up after your purchase in multiple ways. The best source of future sales is not new customers, but existing customers. You might consider offering a coupon in exchange for your customer’s contact information. If you don't collect any customer information, you have no way to encourage them to come check out your newest merchandise or your latest sale. If the customer didn’t find everything they wanted and doesn’t plan to return, you’ll never know why if you don’t follow up. Building customer relationships should be an important part of your business. It will help increase your bottom line.
   
5. Waiting Years In Between Physical Inventory Counts: How can you be sure you’re not overstocking poorly performing merchandise or underselling due to shortage if you don’t have an accurate count of your merchandise? You should perform an inventory count at least once a year. The largest companies do cycle counts of certain departments more frequently. For example, you might want to keep better track of your best-selling departments so that you can order more merchandise before you run out.

The good news is that all of these mistakes can be corrected. Even if you start by just correcting a few areas, you may see a measurable increase in your sales or decrease in shrinkage. Once you start making small improvements, there’s no limit to how many new insights you can gain into what factors are hurting your business.


Donna Knight has worked for One Step Retail Solutions for 15 years and has been doing training and consulting for 13 years. She is certified in Retail Pro, CounterPoint, QuickBooks Point of Sale, LightSpeed Point of Sale and Retail Teamwork. She has been troubleshooting computer problems for over 20 years, starting out by building her first computer in the 1990s. Donna manages One Step Retail Solutions Knowledgebase. Since she began managing it, the Knowledge Base has gone from 250 articles to 3,071 articles.

To view the original article visit: http://www.retailtouchpoints.com/features/executive-viewpoints/top-5-mistakes-brick-and-mortar-retailers-make-that-hurt-their-business

8 Reasons to Do A Pop-Up Shop

by Humayun Khan Humayun Khan

Posted in Physical Retail

June 13, 2014

Pop-up shops are the Snapchat of retail; Most of their magic comes from their temporary and "get-it-while-it-lasts" nature.

In fact, according to Specialty Retail, pop-ups are expected to be a $8 billion a year industry, and has everyone from Warby Parker to popular boy band One Direction trying to get in on the action.
Not only can the location of a pop-up vary but brands use them for a wide array of purposes, from creating an unforgettable and branded experience for consumers that generate buzz and brand awareness, to quickly testing and experimenting in what used to be costly retail waters. In essence, pop-ups are transforming the way we shop.

Over the last few months, we've been busy creating resources to help merchants who might have only sold exclusively online to consider thinking about pop-ups shops as another sales channel. From picking and negotiating the perfect location, designing the store interior and displays, to marketing and evaluating your success, we hope to provide everything you'll need to get started.

Regardless of whether you're considering your first pop-up or have a few under your belt, here are eight reasons why every ecommerce merchant should give pop-up shops a chance.

To view the original article visit: http://www.shopify.com/blog/14478233-8-reasons-why-you-need-to-do-a-pop-up-shop-infographic?utm_content=bufferd472b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer