As a retail apparel company, your list of priorities needs to stay consistent from day-to-day.
- You need to promote your products effectively so you can increase in-store traffic.
- You need to ensure your sales associates practice exceptional customer service on the sales floor to improve the customer experience.
- And, above all, you need to do whatever is necessary to drive shoppers to the fitting room in your store.
The Importance of Fitting Room Conversion Rates to Your Business
Everyone in the retail industry understands how important the fitting room is to sales and revenue growth. This is why our company has spent all of its time and resources over the years trying to understand how to use the fitting room to turn browsing shoppers into long-term customers. During that time, we’ve discovered that the key to securing a customer’s loyalty is making the fitting rooms as accessible and user-friendly as possible.
The next most critical step is to make sure that your company can analyze data on customers when they visit the fitting room and use that data to improve the customer experience over time. All of this can be accomplished with the installation of fitting room call buttons and the use of retail analytics.
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One of the questions we are commonly asked by large retailers when they’re considering installing call buttons in fitting rooms is, “Do I have any way of knowing WHO went into the fitting room?” And “Do I have any way of knowing WHAT they brought with them?”
These are important questions to be asking. They show that a retailer is investigating the power of retail analytics technology, which we believe every retailer should implement it in their store.
Why Spend so Much Time on the Fitting Room Experience?
All the marketing, advertising, and sales promotion your company invests in throughout the year is worthless unless it encourages your customers to visit the fitting room every time they shop. In reality, the fitting room is where the buying decisions happen for shoppers, and everything else is just secondary support.
Research proves that use of the fitting room is a massive predictor of shopper conversion rates. In fact, data collected on the subject shows that sales floor shoppers are only 10% likely to buy when they enter a store, whereas shoppers who visit the fitting room are 67% likely to buy.
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Additional research shows that the customers who are most engaged with your brand provide more opportunities for upselling, cross-selling, and loyalty programs. It’s true that once a shopper enters a fitting room, they are in a buying state of mind.
Want to make sure that your customers end up purchasing more? Make sure that clothing items are easily accessible, and the fitting room is a comfortable environment. This will lead to shoppers trying on multiple clothing items and spending more time in the fitting room. This is great news for you as the retailer.
If this is all true, wouldn’t it make sense to improve technology in your fitting rooms using a method that keeps shoppers happy, sales associates calm, and keeps your revenue stream steady? Wouldn’t it be great if you knew exactly who was using your fitting rooms, what items they were trying on, and what apparel was resonating with them? Wouldn’t it also be great to know which apparel your shoppers tried on and do NOT intend to purchase?
Fortunately for you, the technology we use can help you answer all of the questions above, and much much more.
Beacons Can Show You Who Uses Your Fitting Rooms
If your company decides to use Beacons technology, all your customers have to do is download your app. Then, your management team and associates will be able to evaluate who your customers are, as well as provide them with a variety of perks that will improve their overall shopping and fitting room experience.
You can use Beacons technology to:
- Provide your customers with a mobile-friendly in-store navigation guide.
- To help them find the clothes they want to try on in the store.
- To provide them with access to manage their virtual loyalty reward programs and cashless payment with their mobile device.
- To send them targeted ads that will attract them to various deals in the store, thus increasing the likelihood that they will try on more clothes and buy more product.
- And finally, to identify where your customers are in the store.
Curious about whether beacons can increase your bottom line? Check out this case study of American Eagle written up by Matt McFarland in the Washington Post last fall:
American Eagle Outfitters — an early adopter of beacon technology — used push notifications delivered through the Shopkick app to successfully draw more customers into fitting rooms this summer.
For nearly two months the retailer sent a push notifications to select customers as they entered the 100 of the company’s 929 stores that are outfitted with beacons. The message offered 25 kicks — Shopkick’s rewards currency — if they tried something on in a fitting room. American Eagle found that customers that received the offer were more than twice as likely to try on clothing as those who didn’t.
RFID Tagging Can Show You What Goes Into Your Fitting Rooms
If your company implements RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) tagging, you will be able to see exactly WHAT your customers are bringing into the fitting room.
Because RFID tagging provides an all-encompassing improvement to inventory accuracy, sales, margins, and expedited returns, it makes sense as an addition to your business. But before you jump head over heels to purchase it, make sure you evaluate the ROI of RFID and see if it makes sense for your business.
RFID is not the most inexpensive technology available, but it is extremely useful for tracking what your customers bring into the fitting room, predicting future patterns and increasing revenue over time based on the data collected. There is plenty to read if you want to learn more about RFID technology.
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What’s Next?
After you fully digest the content you just read, we hope you’ll take another step forward. Are you ready to learn more about how retail analytics, fitting room call buttons, and Beacons and RFID Technology can get more customers to your fitting rooms and drastically increase your revenue over time? If you want more information on what retail analytics can do for your business, download our free white paper, “In-Store Retail Analytics” or give us a call.
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