Despite more customers buying products online, many retail merchants still have archaic and inaccessible return policies for internet purchasers.

Management consultancy Kurt Salmon recently analyzed the return processes of the 50 top retailers across the nation. While a number of ecommerce sites ranked well in terms of checkout experience, presentation and shipping, few excelled when it came to returns and exchanges.

"We found that many retailers got high marks in shopping and shipping, but fell short on returns," said Kurt Salmon retail strategist Megan Donadio. "Some retailers required the customer to fill out tiresome paperwork and wait in line at the post office, while others failed to provide any type of tracking method or took weeks to process refunds.”

Only three brands – Amazon, Sephora and Saks Fifth Avenue – achieved the agency's top ratings.

It's crucial that retail merchants provide a satisfactory shopping experience through the process, from initial log on to exchange. Not doing this gives a business' competitors a means to leapfrog it in terms of meeting their customers' needs.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 2:31 am .

Retailers are re-evaluating store operations to determine ways to improve sales and revenue. One sector many companies are focusing on is marketing.

The holiday season proved to be particularly illustrative of this, as the average number of email campaigns delivered by retailers to customers reached an all-time high in 2011, according to a study from Responsys, which tracks more than 100 top retailers.

Additionally, the research found that retailers sent subscribers an average of 177 promotional email campaigns – an increase of 16 percent over 2010. Furthermore, since 2008, this number has increased annually by 51 percent.

"Email marketing continues to become more critical to holiday sales, with the average number of email campaigns sent to a recipient during November and December growing at 20 percent year-over-year, outpacing annual growth," said Chad White, research director at Responsys.

Retailers can continue to innovate and improve their email marketing campaigns by integrating them with social media. Networking sites can be used to mine opinions and ideas for fine-tuning initiatives. 

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 1:44 am .

Smartphones can be retailers' best friends, enabling consumers to find their stores when they aren't at home or secure discounts that encourage them to make purchases. However, retail brands that aren't offering their customers the best prices may also want to take heed – a startling high number of users are tapping their devices to check prices elsewhere.

According to a new survey conducted by Prosper Mobile Insights, new mobile technology is being employed by consumers who are in-store to check prices at other retailers to make sure they are getting the best prices. Nearly half of respondents (40.6 percent) said they had used their phones to do just that. Conversely, only 30.6 percent of consumers compared prices and ended up buying the product from the store they were currently in.

"The data reveals that many mobile users are taking advantage of their smartphones and tablets while shopping, and some of them are walking out the door to make a purchase at another retailer," Prosper Mobile Insights says.

Not all tech-savvy consumers are using their phones for this purpose. For example, 35.8 percent said they used their phones to read product reviews, 29.7 percent scanned quick response codes with their devices and 26.7 percent accessed social check-in platforms while in-store.

Smartphones are giving consumers the power to shop smarter and inform their purchase decisions. There are a variety of actions that can be performed through these devices. They aren't something to fear but retailers do need to recognize the power they can have on customers and embrace the technology rather than work against it.

"Consumers are now able to ask questions of the sales staff, touch the product, check for the best price on their mobile device and then walk out the door. The best way for retailers to counter the comparison shopper is to offer an in-store price match or other promotion to influence them to purchase," Phil Rist, executive vice president of strategy at Prosper, explains.

As of November, more than 91 million Americans own smartphones. In 2011, the number of smartphone owners shot up by more than 20 million. That trend will only continue as plans and devices become less expensive. It's vital for retail brands to develop a mobile strategy sooner rather than later to avoid being burned by the new technology.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Sunday, January 15th, 2012 at 3:05 am .

While many retail brands broke sales records over the 2011 holiday season, some merchants found November and December promotions ended up hurting their bottom line. Merchants need to learn from the holiday season and take advantage of opportunities when they arise, but should not be overly aggressive.

Kimberely Ritter-Martinez, an economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, said 2012 will be full of said opportunities, although it will be a slow-moving strategic year. Debt will continue to saddle consumer spending, but optimism is increasing. Promotions are key to reaching these consumers, but they must be done in a savvy way.

"Barring a meltdown in Europe, the U.S. should do well in 2012 … It will be stronger than 2011," she told Apparel News. "2012 will be a year of fairly slow growth."

Planning is crucial. The retailers that succeeded over the 2011 holiday season were the ones that spread their discounts over the two-month period, whereas the ones that succumbed were those that launched their heaviest campaigns over the Black Friday weekend, Bloomberg recently reported.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 3:03 am .

Ecommerce merchants that require shoppers to register new accounts in order to complete a transaction are annoying the majority of their visitors and may even be losing sales as a result, a new Janrain survey suggests.

Nearly nine in 10 shoppers (86 percent) said they found it bothersome when retailers forced them to create new log-ins for ecommerce websites – a number that has grown 10 percent over the past year. More than half of respondents (54 percent) said they would leave the site and not return if faced with that issue.

Companies hoping to glean more information about their shoppers through these forms may want to think twice – 88 percent said they leave incorrect information when asked to fill out information, up 12 percent over last year.

Retailers should explore other options, such as enabling users to sign in with their Facebook credentials, minimizing the amount of details customers need to input before making a purchase, or not requiring them to create account until after the transaction has been completed.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Thursday, January 12th, 2012 at 2:30 am .

In an effort to generate even more holiday sales, retailers spent approximately 22 percent more year-over-year on paid search advertising initiatives, according to a new report from Ignition One.

The majority of those advertising dollars were spent on Google, the current search market leader. Merchants invested 81.8 percent of their budgets in the Mountain View, California-based company's portal, while 18.1 percent allocated funds to Microsoft Bing, which also powers results on Yahoo.

Overall for the year, retailers' paid search expenditures grew 26 percent, highlighting the importance of leveraging the platform to bolster online and in-store sales. Other core metrics increased as well, including impressions (up 42 percent), clicks (42 percent) and transactions (67 percent).

"Search ads had their biggest quarter yet despite the tepid-to-poor economy. In particular, mobile searches exploded. As the largest search ad seller by a light-year, Google stands to benefit," the report concludes.

With more retail brands opening online shops, it's crucial that merchants promote their website through not only paid search ads but social media and email as well.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 at 2:43 am .

While mobile devices still haven't become core pillars of the shopping experience, 2011 was the year many retailers began experimenting with them. Those retail merchants that took the gamble saw their efforts pay off, with IBM observing a notable uptick in both mobile sales and traffic in 2011.

IBM suggests nearly one-fifth of holiday website traffic (18.3 percent) came from web-enabled phones and tablets, up from 8.4 percent the previous year. On Christmas Day, 14.4 percent of total sales were generated from the devices as well, compared to 5.3 percent one year ago.

"Mobile was certainly a bright spot this holiday season," Todd Cabell, director of ecommerce at Crutchfield, told Internet Retailer. "It's clear more and more customers are becoming comfortable using their mobile devices to research and purchase a wide variety of products."

More than 91 million Americans owned smartphones as of November, and that number continues to grow as each month passes. Moving forward, it will become paramount for retailers to have a mobile plan in play.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 at 2:41 am .

The 2011 holiday season proved to be even bigger than the previous year, but retailer gains may have missed their potential due to incessant price-cutting strategies employed by merchants as they tried to drive more customers into stores.

Overall, retail sales were up 3.4 percent at the 22 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters, beating the 3.3 percent forecast by industry analysts. However, Alison Paul – a retail sector leader at Deloitte in Chicago – noted that promotion and discount usage affected the overall profitability at a number of retail merchants, with several reducing their earnings outlooks in response.

It all comes down to proper retail brand management. Businesses that planned their holiday promotions in advance and spread them throughout the two-month holiday period were able to perform up to expectations, while those that didn't suffered. In particular, those that pulled out all the stops for Black Friday weekend had difficulty generating attention for the remainder of the season.

"The retailers that are still standing are the ones that did their homework several months ago and made decisions about promoting in waves," Paul told Bloomberg. "Getting promotions right is an art form."

Some major retail names were saddled with holiday losses. For example, Aeropostale posted a 10 percent drop off in same-store sales, while total revenue declined 5 percent. Gap reported similar losses across its entire chain – including Old Navy and Banana Republic – with sales declining 4 percent.

"We expected December to be highly promotional, and while we competed aggressively across our brands, our performance was below our expectations," Gap chief executive Glenn Murphy added.

On the flip side, several brands enjoyed big success. Limited Brands – the parent company of Bath and Body Works and Victoria's Secret – saw a sales jump of 7 percent. Meanwhile, Hot Topic and The Buckle observed 1.2 percent and 5 percent improvements, respectively.

If retailers struggled to capitalize on the 2011 holiday season, it's crucial they learn from their mistakes as they develop their marketing campaigns for the new year. Merchants should remember to take the bottom line into consideration as they plan promotional events and give customers discounts.

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 at 2:34 am .

The new year is a time for store operations operators to review the past 12 months and determine where a retailer can and should go next.

Shep Hyken offered retail professionals a few suggestions to focus on this year in a recent article for the website Business2Community. His topic of choice: customer service. No matter the company, its finances or products, it should always be striving to be No. 1 – and customers are the road to the top.

Customer service begins with a retailer's employees. No matter the position or department a worker belongs to, they should treat the business as if it bore their name. This level of dedication will shine through in every task and interaction with customers.

"You may not be the owner, but you should care like you're the owner," Hyken explains. "Not all owners or executives make great leaders, but the ones that are should be emulated. Watch how they take pride in how they deal with customers and employees. Then copy them. Act and care like you are the owner."

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 at 1:45 am .

As per usual, the holiday season was flush for both brick-and-mortar store operations and online retailers. However, in January, it seems that shoppers are deciding to take a break.

While there is nothing strange about consumers saving more in January following holiday-related surges, a recent article from the Fox Small Business Center suggests that this year the "hibernation" may be a bit deeper.

One factor may be an increase on charging this season. As consumers felt more confident, they were more willing to pay for items using credit, assuming they would have the finances to cover themselves when the bill came.

Britt Beemer, chair of America's Research Group, told the source that credit usage was up 25 percent compared to last year. "Now that those credit card bills are hitting mailboxes, shoppers will cut back in a very significant way relative to January and February of the last few years," Beemer added.

However, recent news in the employment sector may mitigate the drop. Last month, the U.S. economy added 200,000 jobs, dropping the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent. 

This entry was posted by Retail Pro on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 at 1:42 am .