February was uncharacteristically warm this year and retailers responded as a result, launching early spring sales and boosting staff numbers to meet the demands of consumers who were trading in their heavy winter clothes for something a bit lighter and more colorful.

This means many retailers already have the staff required for the spring rush, which drove down hiring in April, according to a recent report from Macroeconomic Advisers. Over the course of the month, 31,862 retail hires were made, compared to the 33,209 in March. Both months have been weak in terms of hiring, but Macroeconomic Advisers believes this is solely because of the influx of new hires in February.

"The Kronos Retail Labor Index edged down two-tenths to a still solid 3.8 percent in April, reflecting a moderate decline in hires and a small gain in applications," explained Chris Varvares, senior managing director and co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers. "This was the second consecutive decline in hires, following a strong, nearly 11 percent gain in February."

Having an appropriately sized staff can make a huge difference in store operations and greatly improves the customer experience. Retailers are better off staffing up early so employees have time to learn policies before busy seasons.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 at 10:16 am .

While retail sales were still up in April, the growth of the sector wasn't as explosive as seen in the previous two months, according to a new study from the International Council of Shopping Centers.

The revenue of key retailers, such as Macy's and Costco, grew a scant 1 percent, marking the worst growth performance since 2009. This comes after months of big growth, buoyed by a recovering economy and improving employment statistics.

"The economy is growing in fits and starts, and we are seeing sales shoot up and down," said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at International Council of Shopping Centers, as quoted by The Street. "We're in a choppy period."

Retailers are heavily dependent on consumer spending to generate revenue, so when Americans grow more cognizant of their budgets, retailers tend to suffer. The latest report suggests consumer spending tends to sway with the influx of economic news, and a month of less-than-optimistic reports may have taken its toll on consumer spending.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 at 10:15 am .

Free shipping is perhaps one of the most commonly used perks to encourage consumers to make ecommerce purchases. There is even a Free Shipping Day in December designed to get Americans to buy more goods online.

A recent study from AlixPartners highlights the importance of the promotional gimmick. According to respondents, free shipping is worth waiting for, as 75 percent said they were willing to wait five days for goods, provided they could get it for free.

In fact, when the survey asked why consumers don't shop online more often, 36 percent even said it was because shipping cost money. This was the second-biggest concern about buying goods online, with not being able to see and touch an item in person coming in first at 37 percent.

"The AlixPartners Home-Delivery Shopping Survey, which polled 1,000 adults nationwide between March 22 and 25, found that free shipping has a bigger effect on consumers' online shopping behaviors than the inclusion of sales tax on online purchases," Internet Retailer added, citing the study.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 at 10:13 am .

With many retailers considering upgrades of their point-of-sale software to accept mobile payments, a new survey from Catapult Marketing suggests consumers aren't looking to use these new payment tools anytime soon.

Nearly half of respondents (41 percent) said they were completely disinterested in using mobile payment tools, while 17 percent were "not very interested." Conversely, only 15 percent were very interested and 10 percent were somewhat interested. Meanwhile, 17 percent were neutral on the use of these payment platforms.

The key to establishing mobile devices as viable payment tools lies in privacy and security.

"Privacy and security concerns must be addressed upfront," Catapult Marketing explains. "And theft concerns are real and must be addressed, for example, by using double sign-on, or fingerprint, retina or voice activation. While there may be early adopters of mobile wallets, nothing broad-based is likely until some of these barriers are addressed."

Some technology professionals think that by 2020, mobile payments will become mainstream like credit cards and cash, according to a separate report from PEW Research.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, May 7th, 2012 at 11:36 am .

The economic recession has impacted how many retailers have done business – rather than focusing on gaining new customers, they shifted directions to better service their existing customer base. A number of retailers, ranging from a specialty store down the street to Home Depot, launched customer loyalty programs in an effort to keep their shoppers coming back and spending more frequently.

The latest release of Retail Pro 9 helps merchants to do the same, allowing them to set up loyalty and reward programs for their best customers. Loyalty programs enable businesses to maximize retention of their most profitable customers, strengthen new customer relationships, widen profit margins and improve business intelligence.

With Retail Pro 9, loyalty points are awarded and redeemed using Retail Pro's Central Server. This server processes transactions and updates in real-time, providing customers with up-to-the-minute balances at store locations, ensuring they are able to take advantage of their points at any location. Of course, it also ensures retailers don't get hit with mistakes stemming from "double-dipping" shoppers due to lag time.

The Customer Loyalty module fully leverages the power of the Retail Pro 9 system, giving customers a reason to keep shopping and providing businesses with valuable information about their guests.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 10:15 am .

Facebook is absolutely massive. More than 850 million consumers across the globe have an account on the social network, and approximately half of these potential customers use their mobile phones to stay connected 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For retailers, Facebook has been an important tool to stimulate spending and bolster marketing efforts for a long time. Shortly after implementing the "Like" button a few years back, retailers immediately noted the benefits, with all the key metrics – sales, engagement, website visits – skyrocketing for those using the function. For example, the Gilt Group told The Wall Street Journal in 2010 that the Like button boosted sales by 50 percent.

Facebook has noted the success retailers have had with the Like button and has been rolling out new features over the course of the past year to further improve on the capabilities of these functions. The "Want" and "Own" buttons, for example, enable consumers to tell their friends and family which retail products they are interested in or have already purchased.

The action button

Now, the social network is enabling retailers to add action links to their Timeline pages, Internet Retailer reports. This function allows retailers to set other actions on their timelines. For example, foursquare rolled out a "Save this Place" action button that enables consumers to add a location on to their to-do list to check out at a later date. Fab.com similarly rolled out a "Fave this Product" that adds particular items to the shopper's favorites at the retailer's website.

"When a shopper clicks on the link, that action can appear in his Facebook connections’ news feed, the first page he sees when logging on to the site; the ticker, which features updates on what a Facebook user’s friends are doing at that moment; and on his timeline," the news source notes.

There are a variety of ways retail merchants can make use of Facebook, and the Like and action buttons are only a few of the tools at their disposal. A number of retailers also use the social network for customer service or for advertising via the paid display options.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 9:43 am .

Ecommerce continues to become more integral to the shopping experience, regardless of where consumers live. For example, recent data from BeCommerce suggests ecommerce sales grew by more than 20 percent year-over-year in 2011, hitting the €1.1 billion mark ($1.4 billion).

Online retailers are expecting growth to remain brisk, with domestic merchants "resolutely optimistic" about the future of their businesses. More than eight in 10 Belgium retailers (83 percent) expect at least 10 percent growth in 2012, driven strongly by the rapid adoption of mobile shopping.

"In Belgium, we are seeing growth in everything concerned with online shopping," Patricia Ceysens, BeCommerce president, explained. "In 2012 we also expect the growth trend to continue, with total online sales reaching the €1.18 billion mark ($1.5 billion)."

Throughout the country, more brands are heading online to capture consumer dollars. Kiabi, e5mode and Brantano are just a few of the big names that recently began selling online.

In the United States, ecommerce has already been established as a retail must. More than $50 billion was spent on ecommerce in the last quarter of 2011 alone.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 9:42 am .

Although mobile commerce is still relatively new to the shopping scene, it continues to make real strides in terms of popularity. According to a new report from IBM, mobile commerce expenditures increased by more than 13 percent during the first quarter of 2012, suggesting consumers are becoming increasingly open to buying goods through their smartphones and tablets.

Mobile traffic, regardless of whether a purchase was made, helped initiate nearly one-fifth (17.1 percent) of all online sessions during the first quarter of 2012, while Apple's iPhone drove the overwhelming majority of mobile visits at 6.5 percent. Overall, online sales showed a 6.3 percent increase from February to March 2012.

"Over the first quarter, the empowered consumer continued to demonstrate the momentum of the online channel and specifically mobile commerce, which has established itself as a legitimate channel for shopping,” said Craig Hayman, general manager, IBM industry solutions.

According to data from comScore, more than 100 million Americans currently have web-enabled smartphones. Retailers need to ensure their ecommerce websites are optimized for these devices or else they could miss out on potential sales.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 at 10:46 am .

Many small retailers were losing precious money on debit card point-of-sale transactions due to swipe fees mandated by financial institutions. The Dodd-Frank Act, which went into effect last year, changed all that by capping fees at a specific point.

However, the National Retail Federation has asserted that the nation's largest banks are still collecting way too much money on POS transactions. The organization also expressed its disappointment that fees were not further curtailed through the legislation.

"We believe the numbers for the big banks are too high and had the Fed followed the law there would be significantly greater savings for merchants and their customers," NRF senior vice president and general counsel Mallory Duncan said.

According to data from the Fed, the average swipe card fee charged is 24 cents, down by nearly half from the 43 cents charged in 2009.

Financial institutions throughout the country have struggled to implement new revenue generation strategies in response to the Dodd-Frank Act. Several banks tried to charge debit card fees to consumers to make up the lost revenue but later axed these programs in response to customer backlash.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 at 10:45 am .

The internet has become an increasingly important platform for retailers, not only for informing consumer purchase decisions and marketing, but also for direct sales. The majority of major retailers have at least some sort of ecommerce website in play, and for many, it is quickly becoming the centerpiece of the retail experience.

As a result of this focus, a number of retailers have at least some idea of what consumers expect when they log onto a website. A new study from Deloitte suggests retailers have site search, transaction histories and other core functions down pat. However, more complex features, such as mobile commerce, are still a proverbial thorn in the side of many retail merchants.

According to the research, 80 percent of retailers have fast website loading speeds, comprehensive search features and otherwise adequate home page performance. The consulting firm, however, was quick to note that many retailers could improve in the areas of personalized browsing experience. Additionally, mobile shopping has still not been fully embraced, although the number of merchants supporting smartphones has grown significantly over the past year.

"The maturity of retailers in mobile commerce is split among those with advanced capabilities and those with almost no mobile or tablet commerce capabilities," the report notes. In particular, general merchandise, specialty apparel, hardware and jewelry retailers had robust mobile features, as opposed to mainstream apparel merchants, which had the least advanced mobile capabilities.

Personalized experiences were also minimal. Although three-quarters of respondents (73 percent) had features such as welcome messages for return customers, few had in-depth functionality, such as history monitoring and behavioral targeting.

Key takeaways for smaller

merchants

The Deloitte research assessed some of the top retailers, although the same could likely be said of smaller operations. It's important to have a retail website, regardless of how big or small a retailer is. The fact of the matter is that well over 200 million Americans have access to the web, according to data from comScore, and many turn to the internet to buy goods and services.

Don't just simply have a website available, seek to make the online shopping experience an enjoyable one with personalized features and mobile support. This will ensure merchants aren't losing sales due to functionality and website performance.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 9:35 am .