The First Important Lesson I Learned from Retailing

Twenty six years ago, at a tender age, I learned my first, real world lesson about the psychology of selling. I was working on the till in my first shop and learned a valuable and profitable lesson, one which nobody had touched upon in a Commerce degree in UCD.

I noticed that when I was dealing with a customer at the till that the slower I dispensed their change the more likely they were to make an impulse purchase in the meantime.

Even though the till had a feature which told you how much change was due back to the customer I turned it off. Staff didn’t like this decision but impulse purchases increased significantly.

The placement of confectionery stands, chewing gum and other impulse purchases near the till makes a lot of sense and for small retailers sales of impulse, high margin products such as confectionery is critical.

Website Design for your business

The fundamental principles of doing business, which influence strangers to become customers or clients of our business, don’t really change all that much when you take your business online.

You can view your site as some existential, detached add on to your business marketing which is necessary because..well, everybody has one. Your website can be a collection of pages and/or posts with no targeted outcome for each visitor to your site.

Or you can ensure that each and every page on your site acts like a slippery slope to maximize the chances of persuading your visitor to take the one action you want.

Your one preferred outcome will not always be a sale. But you should have an objective or goal.

A growing combination of these pages will soon become a great website and a true asset to your business.