Reasons Why Retail Store Audits Are Important

Retail store audit is not an uncommon practice in the business industry. Retailers use this opportunity to collect different kinds of information and measure their performance. Usually, the one performing the retail audit uses a checklist to help them keep track of their progress throughout the whole process. But why is this important?

The point of measuring your in-store product performance is to identify what’s working for and against you. The retail and field audit report will tell you that in detail. You will use that information to determine your next course of action to boost your performance. For a positive outcome, your report must be both sufficient and accurate. Moreover, there are two things you need to consider. These are:

– The Checklist

There are four data types you need to collect to get the most out of your retail audit. These are

• Location data
• In-store data
• Competitive analysis data
• Demographic data

Divide your checklist into these categories to avoid leaving out important information in your report.

– Designing your Report

As stated above, the accuracy of data is the key to facilitate a positive decision-making process. Inaccurate information will mislead you.

Some questions you should address before you design an accurate report include:

• How is our performance on individual tasks or projects over time?
• Where have we failed the most?
• How are our stores doing?
• Which stores are performing consistently?

With this information in your disposal, you have a golden opportunity to create the most effective and efficient Store Promotion ideas for retail stores to turn your business into a successful enterprise. That said, here are the reasons why retail store audits are essential.

1. To Boost Your Sales and Market Share

The retail audit highlights your weaknesses and allows you to fix them to enhance your customer experience. If you can make your customer happy, you can expect them to return the favour, and that will reflect in your sales revenues.

2. To Boost Customer Experience

The secret to success in your retailing business lies in the experience you provide to your customers. Even research confirms that 86% of customers have the propensity to spend more on a good or service that gives them pleasure or makes them happy.

Retail audits allow you to measure the brand’s performance based on the customer experience analysis. Some of the things you can learn include

• The time it takes for a customer to locate your products on the shelf.
• How helpful the store employees are to the customer.
• Stock levels inside a store and more.

You will use this information to identify the perfect promotion ideas for retail stores to adjust to your customer’s demands.

3. To Enhance Planogram Compliance

While it might seem like a small thing, planogram compliance is essential. The shelf location, the facings present, the shelf tags, and anything else related to the display will affect your total sales revenue.

A retail audit will highlight these issues and allow you to fix them and follow up on them to enhance compliance. Remember, data accuracy will determine the quality of the outcome you get from the audit.