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buy: One of the most important things a retailer can do to improve conversion rates is to understand why people don't buy – long till line ups, can't find sales help, out-of-stocks, poor merchandising, the list goes on. There are reasons why people visit your store and don't buy and you need to understand these. Every store manager should spend some time observing visitors in their store. Resist the temptation to help; just observe the behaviours. Watch customers as they move through your store, and it won't take long for you to identify some actions you can take to turn more visitors into buyers. transactions: Sounds simple enough, but one many retailers overlook. Staff scheduling is tricky at the best of times, but aligning your staff resources to when prospects are in your store will help you maximise your chances of converting more of them into buyers. Pay particular attention to lunch time when store traffic can be way up, but staff lunch breaks can seriously drag down conversion rates. Associates need to eat, but customers need to be served. Matching staff schedules to traffic volume and timing in your store will help improve your chances of converting more. plug the holes: Traffic volume and conversion rates tend to be inversely related. That is, when traffic is high conversion tends to go down or sag. When traffic levels are low conversion rates tend to go up. It's not hard to understand why this happens. When the store is busy till lines are longer and it's harder to get help from an associate. The opposite is true when the store isn't as busy. So, if you want to improve conversion rates look at the traffic and conversion patterns in your store by day of week and by hour, to look for when conversion rates are sagging – these sags represent the times when sales are being lost. 3. Look for conversion leaks and 2. Align your staff to traffic not 1. Understand why people don't 4. Set conversion targets by store: Having goals and targets are important if you want to improve results. If you don't have a conversion target for your store, you need to set one. It's important to remember that every store is unique and conversion targets should be set uniquely by store. One store might be doing well with a 15% conversion rate while another may be underperforming even though it has a 30% conversion rate. The trick is to move your own conversion rate up relative to your store's performance. 5. Make conversion a team sport: It takes the collective effort of all staff to help turn prospects into buyers, from the cashiers and sales associates to the merchandisers – everyone in the store plays a role. So don't think of conversion as merely some business metric, but rather a simple measure of how well the whole store is doing at helping people buy. A good way to help improve conversion is to ensure all your staff understand what conversion is and that each of them helps influence it. Ask your staff about why they think people don't buy and what the store can do to improve conversion rate. Discuss targets, get them to buy-in and share results. Get them excited about moving the conversion needle and you will significantly improve your chances of actually doing it. Everyday prospects visit your stores with the intent to buy, but leave without making a purchase. Getting your store to capture even a few more of these lost sales can have a significant impact on overall sales results. Improving your in-store conversion rate is not hard to do, but it does take focus and attention – the suggestions above will help you drive conversion in your stores. If you don't track traffic or measure conversion rate in all your stores today, simply put, you are missing out on an entirely new way to drive sales. You can't improve conversion if you don't measure it. The retailers who are focused on driving conversion rate have a significant advantage over those who do not. Mark Ryski www.headcount.com HER MAGAZINE | December/January 2012 | 47