How to Use POS Analytics to Increase Holiday Sales

The holiday shopping season is one of the busiest and most important times of the year for retailers. A point of sale (POS) system helps keep everything on track and makes your retail process easier by providing robust data about products, customers, and trends, providing guidance that will help maximize customer spend.

By analyzing POS data, retailers can identify what is selling, when customers are shopping, which promotions are working, and where inventory issues are happening. And that’s just the beginning of what you can discover. If you’re curious about how to use POS analytics to increase holiday sales, here are a few ways retailers can use POS data analytics to set themselves up for success in the months and years to come.

What Are POS Analytics?

POS analytics are the collection and analysis of data generated by point of sale transactions. This data is interpreted to help understand sales, inventory, customer behavior, product performance, and other retail trends to improve overall sales. Basically, POS analytics are the story behind why your consumers buy, so you can predict how they will act in the future based on current behaviors.

How to Use POS Data to Maximize Holiday Sales

1. Determine Which POS Data You Need

The first step is figuring out what data will be useful. Do you want to focus on customer behaviors, product performance, inventory, e-commerce trends, or something else entirely? What will provide the most actionable insights? Determine what specific data will help drive holiday sales in a meaningful and achievable way, and figure out how you’ll track it.

2. Clean Up Your POS Data

It’s easy for databases to get disorganized, especially when multiple departments or people are adding data. Once you figure out which data you’re focusing on, take time to clean up the database so you have meaningful data that you can use.

3. Compare Online and In-Store Sales Trends

Examine customers’ online behaviors to get greater insight into their wants and needs. This should include online shopping, of course, but also social media interactions and email marketing engagement. Use this data to offer specific products or discounts to individuals or groups.

4. Track Returns and Refunds

What products did your customers return last year? Which did they keep? Were those items purchased online or in-store? Gathering and examining return data will help you to streamline product offerings and move forward more strategically.

5. Identify Best-Selling Products and Inventory Trends

POS analytics help identify best-selling products and inventory trends throughout the year (and leading up to the holidays) by showing which products are purchased most and when. You can also compare stats year over year to see changes as products and consumer interests evolve. If you’re noticing a lot of excess inventory of one product, it’s easy to see that you should nix it next time you complete orders. If things are flying off the shelves and sell out the first day, you know the opposite is true.

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6. Find Your Busiest Shopping Days and Times

Another useful way that you can use POS analytics to increase holiday sales is by determining your busiest shopping days and times. Understanding which days and times are busiest helps you create a better schedule so enough employees are in your retail space during peak times. If you’re noticing an increase on certain days, it’s easy to match the schedule based on those findings. Conversely, it makes it easier to reduce employees on slow days when they aren’t necessary. This helps save on costs when you don’t need excess staff while also having a higher number of employees during peak times.

7. Measure Holiday Promotion Performance

Another useful way that POS analytics come in handy during the holiday season is when trying to measure promotion performance. Most outdated POS systems don’t have the capability to track these things, but modern POS systems and retail tech allow all devices to connect information to tell the full story. You can see the bridge between website performance and sales to paint a fuller picture of how the consumer is interacting with promotions. Tracking the number of clicks or landing pages visited and using that information to show how successful a promotion is comes in handy because you can then adjust the promotion so it keeps performing closer to customer needs.

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What Does POS Data Track During the Holidays?

• Total and net sales
• Average transaction value
• Units per transaction
• Consumer buying patterns
• Inventory changes
• Return and refund patterns
• Promotion and discount performance
• New and returning customers

How to Turn POS Data Into Improved Holiday Sales

The best way to turn POS data into improved holiday sales is to start with a great system. If your current point of sale system isn’t capable of pulling detailed reports and statistics, it might be time to upgrade to a newer POS system. Once you have better consumer information in your hands, it’s easy to see the patterns and make changes accordingly.

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If you plan to enhance your POS analytics to increase holiday sales, RTI offers all-in-one POS services and can help you source the best retail tech to meet your store needs. With a wide variety of new and refurbished POS hardware and equipment, we can help you get started with better analytics by starting with the right system. If you need help choosing a hybrid POS solution, contact our POS systems specialists for help finding the perfect point of sale solution for your retail store, restaurant, or other small business.

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Source: Retail Info Systems, “The Joy of Data: How Brick-and-Mortars Can Leverage Analytics this Season”