Customers today still love the individual experience of the physical shop, especially when that store is in their community.  Nevertheless, they anticipate more, given the convenience and personalization they get from shopping online.  It’s a wise move when neighborhood retailers can unite both worlds, reaping benefits to the bottom line and pleasing shoppers.  

We had to begin with the basics: understanding how many folks came into the store, when and what they purchased.  Now, there were few tools for medium-sized and small businesses to get that data.  

More importantly, these programs and providers work together for the benefit of the merchant.  For under $100 per month, a shop can take charge of their company by gaining entry to the metrics for decreasing costs and revenues that are increasing.  

Nonetheless, large companies with big budgets still have significant benefits.  Organizations are currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising, social networking, and technology, both online and in-store.  Mom-and-pop shops struggle to compete with the scale of leading retailers and resources.   

It’s ironic that the most significant retailers finally have the upper hand when it comes to understanding shoppers and making them feel special; this should be the domain name of the small store owner who knows many of her clients.  There are methods that a merchant can deliver a personal touch.  

The most innovative technology in our shop was an early point-of-sale system that was hard-pressed to handle an easy trade, let alone offer any valuable data.  It was not possible to understand where to focus our resources on informing us what was not functioning and was. 

Some small retailers will not care for the idea of “digitizing” their enterprise.  They would like to shake hands with clients and discuss the high school soccer team.  That’s fantastic, but they also will need to measure a few metrics to correct offerings and operations which achieve outcomes.  Small shops need technology to collect and analyze data on traffic patterns per hour, week and day, variations in conversion rates per day and hour of the week, which products are in high need and a product is selling well and why and detailed profiles of the typical and premium customers.  

Stay local but act globally.  My parents, like many of the generation, were not able or prepared to retire but were ready for a fresh challenge once the store came on the market in the city where I grew up.  We decided to buy it.  With the increasing interest in produced and locally grown products, some say that local retailers have a unique advantage.