The retail point-of-sale (POS) environment has changed. Gone are the days when small businesses had to invest big on hardware systems. The new wave of cloud-based POS apps allows retail business owners access to systems that are better for their customers and their bottom lines.
Here are five simple but important benefits to updating your retail point-of-sale system.
Inventory management
Retail businesses tend to carry more high-value inventory than food and beverage businesses, who generally turn their inventory over faster. A retail POS system offers you the ability to manage your inventory with features such as item counts and automated stock alerts when you’re running low on best-selling products, ensuring you’ll never miss a sale. Powerful back-end reporting can provide you with sales comparison charts and detailed information about what sells best at different times during the day. Connecting Square to other specialised, cloud-based inventory solutions such as Stitch Labs can also help save hours on inventory management.
Spontaneity
Want to run a spontaneous discount for VIP customers? No problem. Square Point of Sale allows you to update details in your item list such as name, discount and price on the fly. If you want to discount an item for a special customer promotion and then track redemptions, you can do that immediately, right from your mobile device.
Customer experience
It’s easier and much cheaper to hold on to an existing customer than it is to attract new ones, so simple tools that improve the customer experience for your retail business can reap rewards. Email and SMS receipts that allow customers to respond directly to you with feedback — if an item is out of stock, for example, or a staff member wasn’t responsive enough — can open up an important channel of communication and shed light on what is and isn’t working in your business.
Mobility
Gone are the days when the customer waited in a queue to check out with a salesperson hidden behind a counter. The beauty of running a cloud-based POS from a tablet or smartphone is that you can record sales from anywhere in the shop. Customers appreciate having a direct and comfortable conversation, without a counter between them and the shop employee. A roaming salesperson can also have an easier time serving multiple customers at once, does more on-the-spot upselling, and can help improve your in-store security.
Simple user interface
Time spent training your staff to feel empowered by technology could be better spent getting them walking the shop floor and interacting with your customers, so a point-of-sale that is simple to use (but powerful under the hood) is essential. Square Point of Sale’s user interface is designed for simplicity and speed, with a short checkout flow and an image-based item library that makes training staff quick and painless.
Hardware connectivity
Many shop owners prefer minimal interfaces for their retail businesses, but if you require tools like a receipt printer or barcode scanner, you can connect these devices to Square Point of Sale to enhance the experience for your staff and makes checkout smoother for the customer.
Square Point of Sale is the free point-of-sale system that is flexible and powerful enough to suit a wide range of retail businesses—whether you’re a smaller, independent shop or a larger chain like Uniqlo, Burberry and Lululemon (some of our global retail partners).
Do you have more questions about point of sale? The Square team is here to help. Call our local support team on 1800 760 137, tweet us at @SqSupportAU or send us an email.
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