The Window Sales Funnel

You may have heard this phrase before, or else its famous variation:   "What is not measured is not managed!"  Both sentences highlight something simple, if you do not measure a process, you do not know if your execution is good or bad, so you can not improve it.

One of the Golden Rules of Sales that I highlight in my lectures for retailers, is measure results. The measurement it is fundamental   because demonstrates clearly if your   objectives are being achieved and if the investments in cash and time you're making are causing an effect. This may prove that the path is correct or needs to be adjusted. I have said that the great challenge of our visual merchandising is to be less VISUAL and more MERCHANDISING, that is to say, it is no use to be only aesthetically beautiful, but rather to bring   results in sales to the store. Measurement ensures that this objective is pursued in a methodical and professional manner.

The Sales Funnel is an already well-known tool that I borrowed to illustrate the process of the effectiveness of your shop window.   Basically it is represented by a funnel because the format demonstrates that to make a sale, it is necessary multiple clients that with each step of the process are decreasing of quantity until the final action of the purchase.

Over time, analyzing the history, it is possible to evaluate that for each sale you have to attract a certain number of customers in the first stage, or to predict that by the number of people in a certain stage of the funnel, your sales will be approximately X.

This method applied to our shop window is carried out by the analysis:

1.              of the flow of people passing in front of the store,

2.              of the people who stop to watch the window,

3.              of people entering the store,

4.              and finally those who make the purchase.

Notice that I wrote analysis . This is an important part of the process as it is necessary to decode and understand the results of your records. I have a client who started to make these records and could not find a logical reason why at certain periods the window would have a better result, attracting more customers than its normal average. Until one day she asked her client why she came to the mall and she said she was going to see such a movie. She began incorporating this question to shoppers and finally discovered that her store was in the way that customers made from parking to movie theaters, and when there were romantic movies on display, there was more of her target audience circulating on the mall raising her conversion rate! She began tracking the films on display, and in addition to better tailoring the window, set up a promotion that gave tickets to these films wanted by their customers.

Now let's talk in more detail how to use this tool to evaluate your window.Remember if:   The window is a super tool  of sales and  is accessible to merchants of any size , from the minors to the giants, but if the big ones have other tools like advertising on radio, tv, etc. - small ones have much more limited resources,  must strategically use the window to generate SALES!   For measure your results and improve yourself, generating more sales, is that we will use the funnel. So get to work!

Remembering that   The funnel of the shop window is composed of  phases from attraction until the sale . The two points to be measured and that will indicate the success of the strategy you have adopted are:

1. The Window attractiveness   - Measure obtained from dividing the amount of people who stop to in front of your window to see it by the amount of people passing in front of the store (multiplied by 100 to give you the percentage)

2. Example: Let's say that at a given time 108 people passed and 9 stopped, that would give a result of 9 divided by 108, equal to 0.83, multiplied by a hundred, equal to 8.3% of people being attracted to the shop window.

3. Important points to consider: Compare thing with same thing. If you change many parameters  you will not know which caused the change of results. For example, comparing opening times with peak hours, or historically strong days with weak days (retailers know that Sunday is better than Monday, for wholesalers, nor open on Sunday ...) Nowadays the technology helps a lot and is very affordable . There are a large number of companies with flow counting technologies, including determining the gender, age of the client and thus helping you to identify valuable and fundamental information that is yours target audience impacted. And remember, a valuable technique is the REAL TEST of options, technically called   A / B Test   and is widely used in the online world to measure   which version converts better, that is, which page attracts more people to a particular action (usually click here action). In the same way you can have two different shop windows in stores of the same profile and measure which works best. Over time you will begin to have valuable perceptions of what attracts or repels your audience.

4. I know you must be curious to know what result you should get. As you know, we struggle a lot against the lack of data, but just so you do not stay in the dark, I share some historical data, if you measure and want to share your data with me, I am setting up a database to update the numbers, you will be very welcome. In general, indices less than 5% show low attractiveness, between 5 and 10% are in the market average and above 10% is a good result. You should analyze superior results   to understand what caused them and how   repeat in future windows.

The second point  to be measured and evaluated is the ability to generate SALES with the window:

1. The  Showcase Sale Generation  is measured by the number of people who ENTER the store by those who stopped in front of the shop window.(multiplied by 100 to give you the percentage)

2. Example: We took those 9 that stopped and say 3 entered, that would give a result of 3 divided by 9, equal to 0.33, multiplied by a hundred, equal to 33.3% of the people being attracted by the showcase.

3. It is important to realize that the window, besides impacting through attraction, should direct the customer into the store, not just an institutional action   (although valid). Institutional action is one that aims to create and reinforce the brand in the customer's mind, but we seek an action of  promotional sales,   so remember that the window   communicates   also forms of payment, installments, offers, discounts, etc. that compose every message that you must pass to the client.

4. Again the technology here helps you measure and identify the target customer and its impact on them, who has entered and who has not, bringing important reflections of attitudes you can take to increase your bottom line.

5. One important note: If the customer entered the store, he changed his mindset. Say my friend  Marcelo Pardo of   IEMI , an institute specialized in retail research:

" When the customer is looking at the window, he thinks," Why should I buy this? "But when he enters the store, he changes to" Why should not I buy that? "" If nothing gets in the way of him, things like missing color / size or a BAD SERVICE, he or she will buy! "

6. In general, indices less than 12% show low capacity to generate sales, between 12 and 20% are in the market average and above 20% is a good result. Again, look for success factors so they can be repeatedly used.

I hope the tips are useful and that we make retail an increasingly professional environment that brings results and values its professionals and careers linked to it. This is already starting to happen and we have in the list of the world's highest paid CEOs that are in the retail sector (but this is the theme for another article). Success and good sales!