How Brands Can Improve In-store Conversions Through Mobile Merchandising

By Dilip Daswani

More brick-and-mortar retailers today are worried about retention of customers that display increasingly digital and mobile-influenced behavior. Take a step back and watch consumers while shopping in a mall, supermarket or as they walk past stores. You'll observe people with their eyes connected to their smartphones, snapping photos, using apps, pulling up reviews, running searches, messaging their friends or calling someone to get their opinion on what to purchase.

According to Nielsen, "52 percent of adult mobile phone owners use their devices while in a store to get help with purchasing decisions." ComScore also highlights another habit observed in retail: "one in five smartphone users scan product barcodes, and nearly one in eight compare prices on their phone while in a store."

For retailers, the mobile-wielding millennial shopper can be viewed with worry and despair, or as an opportunity to improve in-store engagement and conversions through mobile merchandising. Activating a mobile merchandising strategy to connect with smartphone-equipped shoppers can actually encourage them to interact within your retail environment via their smartphones. Enabling mobile consumers is a lot more productive in driving in-store conversions than ignoring this shift in consumer behavior.

Here are three insights for retailers to improve in-store conversions using mobile merchandising:

1. Create an interactive mobile environment in-store. QR codes, NFC and 2-D barcodes all help to create a mobile in-store environment. There's also Apple's iBeacon technology that triggers push notifications through an app as shoppers come into range of Bluetooth beacons placed in various sections of the store. Let shoppers know your store is mobile ready — free Wi-Fi access goes a long way in creating a mobile merchandising environment. Most importantly, communicate to shoppers that it's a mobile-activated store through messaging and your staff. Make consumers aware of incentives for interacting with products, labels and signs strategically placed within the store.

2. Implement extended packaging standards. Extended packaging standards were conceptualized years ago by the stalwarts of retail like Nestle, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart and others. Essentially, it uses mobile scanable 2-D barcodes/QR codes on the product packaging, enabling consumers to access additional information about the product via their smartphones. Having each individual product deliver highly specific product details to consumers’ smartphones is an essential element of mobile merchandising, and has positive results on sell through rates in-store. Additional information delivered on the scan of a product could be the difference between evaluating a product and actually purchasing it.

3. Engage customers with content and promotions at the point of purchase. Imagine a young man walking up to a basketball in a sporting goods store, scanning the QR code linked to the product and receiving a video of LeBron James talking about his association with the manufacturer and his input on the design of the ball. Imagine he's offered a chance to meet LeBron in person if he buys the ball before a certain date, keys in his contact details and shares the promotion with his friends on Facebook — all possible with just a few clicks. Engaging customers at the opportune moment is a powerful element in mobile merchandising.

The future of mobile merchandising lies in the ability of retailers to leverage the mobile technologies available to engage consumers in-store and enable their products and packaging to deliver stories. The result is an enhanced brand affinity with buyers and the ability to link in-store buyer behavior with the online social media world. This ultimately creates an interactive mobile environment which is geared toward improving in-store conversions.

Dilip Daswani is CEO of Qliktag Software, an innovator of mobile software solutions that bridge the gap between brands and buyers.