News Feature | December 7, 2015

10 Ways Digital Can Help Boost Holiday Sales

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Boost Holiday Retail Sales

Study presents top 10 tech list to help retailers navigate customers’ holiday shopping desires.

Digital shopping can be fun, convenient, and profitable for both consumers and retailers this holiday season when done right.  In a recent study consisting of original research, economic analysis, and interviews with retail industry leaders, Cisco created a top 10 tech list to help retailers navigate the holiday shopping desires of today’s digital consumers.  The initial research findings include 1240 consumer responses from the United States and the United Kingdom. 

As retailers swing into the holidays full throttle, here are the top 10 ways digital technology can maximize customer satisfaction and revenue opportunities this holiday season, based on the findings of the “Win the Digital Consumer” report.

  • Help customers navigate to desired products. Sixty-three percent of shoppers said they would use in-store guidance if it were available.
  • Surprise customers with in-store offers via digital signage. Seventy-eight percent of shoppers reported that they would use general offers via Digital Signage.
  • Use a digital wall that promotes your store’s Top 10 Deals to engage and entice shoppers. Forty-five percent of shoppers would use Top Ten rankings.
  • Create a VIP experience through your loyalty program. Fifty-four percent of shoppers reported that they would use targeted mobile offers.
  • Enable QR Code scanning to allow customers get detailed product information. Sixty percent of shoppers would scan barcodes while shopping.
  • Use digital signage to promote excess inventory using real-time analytics. Seventy-eight percent of shoppers would use in-store offers.
  • Enable mobile checkout through a strong and secure Wi-Fi connection. Forty-nine percent of shoppers would use mobile payments. For example, home improvement retailer Home Depot has rolled out FIRST Phones to help with faster checkout and location of items for customers.
  • Recommend products based on shopping history and real-time analytics. Forty-eight percent of shoppers would use such a service.
  • Decrease customer wait time by deploying employees to high traffic areas via mobile notifications. Thirty percent of employee time is spent on sales and customer service.
  • Provide customers with same day delivery and alert suppliers using analytics when inevitable out-of-stocks occur. Fifty-Three percent of shoppers would use same day delivery.

As Innovative Retail Technologies reported, “Digital transformation is not a megatrend to be feared, but rather a strategy to be defined. And that channel should be omni-channel focused.”

As retailers compete to win the dollars of the holiday shoppers, using these 10 digital tricks will help achieve higher numbers at the till.