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Face it. Most of us are purchasing products on Amazon, and a few of us are purchasing things on Amazon every single day.

And, it`s not simply things... music, movies and shopping experiences are being offered through the retail giant. If you have a brick and mortar store, how can you compete in an environment where the buyer values convenience, speed and doing it from their smart phones over shopping in store?

Bottom Line: Can your Retail Store Compete With Amazon?

The response is: some time. Surprisingly there are a few ways you can rise above the "Generation Now" culture to offer a shopping experience that levels and a few times even outperforms the "get-it-fast and cheap" culture of online retail.

1. Go Beyond the Brick and Mortar: Get an Online Store

- There`s only one thing you have which Amazon can`t, and that is a physical store. So you need to use that to your potential benefit by offering a shopping experience

Poor Return Policy

Not every person feels happy with the products they get. In case if you offer a money back guarantee without any questions asked, you need to respect it. Sometimes, products arrive damaged in the mail. E-Commerce business businesses should expect a specific percentage of returns because of carrier woes. Despite the reasons why a customer returns product, you should replace or refund the order without delays. Otherwise, the customer won`t order from you once again. Granted, a company can come with limitations on returns. 90 days would be a more than liberal cutoff time for replacements. It`s unreasonable to give customers too shot of a cutoff time. Set up suitable return policy customers will find worthy and stick with it.

Low-Quality Products

Customers expect their products should keep a decent level of standards. Paying high for low-quality products isn`t worthy. If a product fails customer reviews, possibly you should expel

Tip #1 - Use "Good" Bar Code Scanners

Bar code scanners allow you to check products faster and accurately at the point of sale than typing the SKU number on a keyboard.

If you need to scan products fast, then you should consider an "omni-directional" scanner. These scanners help you to check products quickly because it doesn`t matter how the bar code is positioned. The rest of the scanners need the bar code to be turned a specific direction as they emit only a single line. Simply consider your last visit to the supermarket. Can you imagine how slow it would be if the cashier has to make sure each barcode scanner was turned in a particular direction?

Tip #2 - Use New Technology to Speed Up Your Credit Card Authorizations

With credit card processing that is integrated with your epos

Business having strong omnichannel engagement can keep up to 89% of their customers, compared with 33% of businesses with weak engagement.

But, how can you keep your customers and improve your customer experience for shoppers whose journeys you`re still struggling to pinpoint?

Learn about your customers

One way is to build steps into your operations that will help you to learn more about your customers. Train your staff to build customer profiles as they interact with customers.

But if you can give your customers a valid reason to share their data to you online or in stores, you are in a good position to collect accurate data that will help you to draw useful, actionable insights from your company performance.

For example, if there`s something a shopper wanted that is not in stock, retailers can turn in to a bad experience into a positive one by replacing an order for them from the store with free delivering pleasing the customer while

When you`re going through the POS selection process, it`s important to see this purchase from a holistic standpoint. Here are three factors everyone in the market for a point of sale should consider before making a buying decision.

We get it an account executive comes in hot offering you discounts or free upfront costs on hardware, epos software, and services. They dazzle you with words like cloud-based platform, third party app integrations, and 24/7 customer support. However, even "free" comes with a cost, which you`ll find in the terms and conditions of any merchant agreement.

The terms in the merchant agreement are important as they are the base that calculates your total financial exposure. A shorter agreement term compares to less financial exposure, while a long term can be detrimental to your business. To set you up, here are a few things you have to look for in your merchant agreement:

• • Does the POS supplier have the ability to raise processing r

But did you realize that if your loyalty program isn`t integrated with your EPOS system, you are limiting your ROI? Here are five reasons to integrate EPOS and loyalty to maximize benefits for your business:

Meaningful Data

Using an integrated platform means all systems and apps share data. Loyalty data, although important all alone, can offer deeper insights when you analyze it with other data from the POS. Having an integrated system, such as, you can easily determine the merchandise your most loyal customers are purchasing, which can enable you to forecast more accurately and keep away from stock-outs. Also, information from an integrated system gives you an overall, real time view about your business something that is impossible with non integrated systems.

Smarter Marketing

Your loyalty program can also be an incredible marketing tool if that it can access the exact data. Matching sales data with loyalty program accounts