Clothing and boutique point of sale systems should be able to help you answer some key questions, like:
“Have you got it in black?”
“Does this come in a 12?”
“Do you have anything with a higher collar?”
These are the kinds of questions your point of sale system must be able to answer. Where once your it was enough to merely process a payment and issue a receipt, now your boutique point of sale system can contain every detail of your business.
That means it should be able to track every item you have in your inventory, and every variation of style, color, shape, size, and more. You should know exactly how much you have left, when more are arriving, and how popular each item has been over the past weeks, months, or even years.
When your business depends on keeping up with ever-changing seasons, styles, and trends, it is critical you know what you have to hand, what you need to move, and what your customers are asking for.
And once you answer your customer’s questions you can use your point of sale system to make them a deal that can’t turn down.
The Top 5 Features Your Boutique Point of Sale System Must Have
Change is the key challenge in running a clothing and boutique business. Keeping up with current trends and forging ahead with your own is what brings your customers back in store. The more you change the greater the experience for your customers every time they check back in with you.
While that change is exciting the practical side of making it profitable and relevant is challenging. That’s where digital solutions come in. Today’s point of sale systems operates as up-to-the-minute databases of everything that’s available to your customers. You can use them as a central hub to build your store your way, the way you know works.
To get there you need to make sure your boutique point of sale system has the following features.
- Advanced Inventory Management
As we mentioned earlier, your point of sales system can become a virtual warehouse for all your products and all the available variations. You can use it to provide options for your customers in real-time or use a customer-facing iPad display so they can peruse the alternatives themselves. Either way, the device can be linked directly to your inventory, so you finalize a sale, prioritize a purchase order, or negotiate a personalized bundle of items to complete your customer’s shopping experience.
All this information can also be used to track customer buying trends and streamline the flow of items through your clothing store or boutique. And it should be fully customizable so you can attach complete transaction histories your own unique creations as well as those delivered by wholesalers.
- Personalized Tags and Barcodes
The ever-changing nature of the boutique business means you need to be able to turn over and incentives the sale of specific items and peak times. What you don’t want to do is lose prestige in the process. Rather than resort to black pen scribbles on your tags and miscellaneous entries in your register, you should be able to produce and print your own professional standard barcodes and prices.
With a printer no more complex than the receipt machine by the register, you can maintain the exclusive feel of your boutique while discounting and bundling together items for a quick sale.
- Product Exchange, Refund, and Customer Loyalty.
Produce options such as those above give you greater control over your inventory. You can further enhance that control by adopting boutique point of sale systems that expand the possibilities of the customer transaction. A digital POS system will allow you to readily exchange and refund customer purchases with direct reference to your inventory, making it easier to reissue stock or adjust your purchase orders.
You can also use your POS system to create your own customer loyalty program. By entering a customer’s details at the point of sale you can track their buying habits over time, anticipate their tastes, and incentivize return visits. Again, the goal is to use the latest in digital tech to make a practical difference in your working life.
- POS in the Cloud
Another advantage a digital point of sales system can afford you is the ability to work across devices, and therefore locations. If your solution is hosted in the Cloud, which is really just an outsourced data server you use to access your software, you can connect to your central POS system through most internet-connected devices.
So, from your home, office, the local coffee house, or in transit you can connect to your central system from your smartphone or laptop and get some work done when it suits. You can check on the day’s sales, update the staff roster, make purchase orders and more, with the flexibility of a work/life balance any boutique owner or manager needs to keep things operating smoothly.
- Flexible Payment Options
Finally, your digital POS system should give your customers the flexibility to complete their transactions using the method of payment that’s most convenient and comfortable. You can equip your register with contactless card and smartphone readers, portable devices, and traditional cash facilities. Each can be paired with a wireless, portable printer or hooked up to a traditional counter-based machine.
As with all the features on this list, flexible payment options give you the flexibility to manage your boutique the way you know best serves your customers. You can empower your customers through self-serve options, or give them the personal touch of a spur-of-the-moment discount or an in-depth discussion about what’s available to be ordered in.
Boutique Point of Sale Systems
Whenever you search for a point of sale system upgrade, or if you’re building a new venture from scratch, it pays to make sure the tech serves your practical in-store and after-hours requirements. Don’t be afraid to demand a solution that can be configured to your needs – after all, it is your customers who ultimately benefit from a POS system that holds all the answers.
The point sale systems created by talech give you greater control over your own business. Our team can help you put together a solution that will keep and your customers informed of exactly what is available at any given time. Sign up for a free demo today and start to better understand your own business.
