Skip to content
DotActiv and FastMoving
Kyle DorflingOct 18, 2018 4:21:20 PM3 min read

How Technology and Data Drive In-Store Sales

Considering the pace at which the retail industry evolves, you need to be forward-thinking. That’s especially true if you want to remain competitive and relevant. The simplest way of ensuring that happens is to embrace your retail data and use it to offer your customers a better in-store experience.

After all, it is your retail data that drives improved category performance. But how does that work? How can you use your retail data to drive in-store sales? Below you’ll find a few ways:

1. You can choose the right products for your stores

Assortment planning - the process of selecting which products to sell in stores - should always be of primary concern. That’s because the final assortment you chose plays a role in shopper satisfaction. It can also mean the difference between shoppers returning to your store or not.

However, before you decide on which product to stock, you first need to apply a set of rules or calculations to each sub-grouping of products. These rules are unique and assist you to uncover both opportunity gaps and slow movers in your product assortments.

 

Create highly customised product assortments with DotActiv software

 

The data used here include your Sales, Market Data as well as the space that is available to you. As a result, your days of decentralised and haphazard buying becomes a problem of the past.

2. You can build data-driven planograms quickly and more efficiently

There is no doubt that planograms contribute to sales growth and efficiency.

We’ve done a number of case studies recently and found that where retailers implemented planograms build using DotActiv software, the categories in question saw an increase in sales of between 19% and 147%, which is significant.

The problem is that in the past, you could only build planograms manually. Fortunately, the software has since evolved to ensure that that is no longer the case.

Using planogram automation software, you can now build data-driven product layouts, which take sound merchandising principles into account with a few clicks of a button.

An exercise that used to take a few hours to complete now takes far less.

3. With data, you can allocate the correct space to your products

A simple way for you to increase your in-store sales is to ensure that the amount of space a product occupies on the shelf relates directly to the sales that it generates.

It is known as shelf performance analysis, and you're only able to determine this by examining the relevant data that is in a planogram namely Sales; Product; and Fixture Information.

 

Turn your retail data into actionable insights with DotActiv software

 

For example, if the data shows that a product is contributing more and more of the overall sales to the category over a period, you would allocate additional space to allow it to continue to grow and provide that return on investment.

By understanding your shelf space performance, you are essentially maximising the selling potential of your shelf space. Also, by allocating the correct shelf space to each product, shoppers are better able to find what they are looking for.

An invaluable concept around analysing shelf space performance is days of supply.

4. You can plan your floor space strategically

A floor plan is essentially a data-driven retail blueprint showing you where to position your categories in-store for maximum return on investment.

With data, you can give each category the proper allocation of space relative to their sales contribution to your store. This method of floor planning provides you with an opportunity to apply logic to category positioning while also reducing floor congestion.

The key difference in thinking here is that your sales data only tells you half the story. When you combine sales data with space planning data using specialised software, you can see your store performance in a new light.

Armed with the above information, you don’t merely apportion the correct amount of space to each category. You also position your categories in such a way that you alter shopper traffic flow.

Some of the reasons why you should consider this is to expose your customers to more merchandise, reduce traffic hot spots during peak shopping hours, and lower the possibility of shopper frustration.

Conclusion

Understanding your retail data is key to helping you to make smarter business decisions. What’s more, by combining it with space management data, you get to see your retail data in a whole new light. Interested in finding out more? You can visit our online store here or book an exploratory consultation here.

*This article was initially posted on FastMoving.co.za.

avatar

Kyle Dorfling

Kyle joined DotActiv in 2009. He gained experience across multiple facets of the business before his appointment as Acting CEO in 2021.

RELATED ARTICLES