In the last installment of this blog, we at pcAmerica offered three strategies for keeping customers coming back. Here are three more.

With consumers continuing to watch their budgets and those who are spending more freely again, becoming increasingly selective about where they put their money down, retailers and restaurant operators must double their efforts to keep customers coming back. Here are a few strategies for moving in that direction:

As a retailer or restaurateur, you can be just as innovative, even at the point of sale. Retailers might take a page from the book of Best Buy, which last year began putting QR codes on shelf signs to give shoppers more information about the products displayed at the moment of decision.

If your business is not performing to your liking—either entirely or partially—step back and give your playbook an honest evaluation. What’s working? What’s not? Why? Some of this information can be gleaned through a thorough review of point of sale data maintained in systems such as pcAmerica’s Cash Register Express and Restaurant Pro Express.

Data analysis that reveals common purchasing affinities can also be used to put together more creative, effective promotions. For example, if you notice that two particular items are frequently bought together, you can structure a “buy two of each, get one of each free” offer.

For example, using the point of sale system to send newsletters and other email communications to customers is a great way to remind them that you’re around and to provide them with helpful information that will lead them back to your store or restaurant time and time again.

You can’t run from it: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social networking tools are everywhere these days. They’ve even made a movie about it: “The Social Network”, the story of the Harvard University students who launched Facebook, premiered in theaters on October 1.
Yet you still may ask why you, as a retailer or restaurant operator, [...]

With such a solution in place, you can set mass updating of prices to occur on a set schedule. You can also select a department, a list of items or items with specific properties and effortlessly set price changes to reflect increases, decreases, sales, special offers (like “buy two, get one free” or “buy a pound, get the second pound free”) and more—

Some point of sale software, such as Version 12.5 of Cash Register Express from pcAmerica, integrates with certain vendors’ scale software to the extent that price updates can be sent to scales automatically rather than programmed in separately.

It’s the law: Neither retailers nor restaurateurs can sell or serve age-restricted items, including tobacco, liquor and gambling products, without first verifying the customers’ age. Those that disobey the law, intentionally or otherwise, face stiff fines if caught—and even put themselves at risk of seeing their businesses shut down.