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Bookshops must leverage technology to stay ahead in today’s fast-paced and competitive retail environment. One of the most critical tools for modern bookshops is a comprehensive point of sale system that neatly binds the business’s operations together and offers integrations for various back-office needs.
This blog explores the multifaceted benefits of an integrated POS system for bookshops, focusing on accounting, marketplace management, marketing, inventory management, and digital sales.
Book stores by default have an inventory that is frequently changing, and a proper retail management system can play a massive role in the business’s overall performance. Some stores rely entirely on the thrift model, where people donate books for the store to turn around.
Others operate on a mixture of donations and new print materials. Some stores sell new books, mixed books, and additional retail merchandise spanning from retail toys to board games and collectibles. This is compounded with seasonality throwing a wrench into the assortment that is on sale.
That is why tools like scanner devices, label printers, automated programs that run frequent updates, and fulfillment optimization are essential for a streamlined inventory process.
| Retail Technology Integration Type | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Catalog Search | View vendor catalogs directly through the point of sale in real-time to access millions of active and out-of-print books from thousands of publishers, along with music, games, and other products. |
| Product Catalogs | Import all the products you want to sell directly within your POS database, with integrations to your suppliers, ensuring the most comprehensive and accurate information. |
| Electronic/Automated Purchasing | Automate your purchasing for store replenishment based on min/max levels within the retail software and send PO’s electronically. |
| Real-Time Inventory | Access real-time inventory directly from the point of sale, across all of your stores, sales channels and even your suppliers. |
| Sell Vendor Stock | Use the point of sale to offer any product that the vendor currently has in stock. |
| Special Orders | Automatically generate and send a special order to the vendor to fulfill via drop shipping. |
By leveraging these integrations, bookstores can offer a seamless and comprehensive inventory experience both in-store and online, ensuring they meet customer needs effectively and efficiently.
With using vendor integrations and leveraging automation, book shops and literature sellers also gain the following functionalities from their software for inventory management:
Bookshops can significantly expand their reach by having their own eCommerce website, as well as listing products on popular marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. A POS and eCommerce system with marketplace integration capabilities allows bookstore owners to interact with their listings directly through the retail system.
Here, they can manage listings, monitor inventory, adjust prices, write product descriptions, and handle all the unique attributes required for eCommerce product listings. When a sale is completed, either in-store or online, the inventory levels automatically adjust on the online marketplace to show the current allotment.
In addition to using online third-party marketplaces, retailers can opt to have their own branded mobile shopping app. By using this shopping application, retailers can be in their customers’ pockets 24/7. This allows retailers to utilize marketing push button notifications, bypassing email marketing spam filters and selling merchandise directly from the application. Once customers make a purchase, retailers can offer the following order pickup options:
| Purchase Option | How it Works |
|---|---|
| In-Store Checkout | View availability online, to then purchase the book or item in the store and check out at the register in the old-fashioned way. |
| BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store) | Customer completes the purchase on the eCommerce website or mobile app and then picks the order up at the store or nearest location if it's a chain retailer. |
| Curbside Pickup | Customers complete the purchase online, like BOPIS, but are sent a message to their mobile shopping app, which they reply to when they arrive, and an employee brings the order to their vehicle. |
| Same-Day Delivery | Depending on the customer's proximity to the retailer's closest physical location, they can opt to have their order delivered directly to their doorstep on the same day. |
| Traditional Shipping | This is the most standard form of shipping and can be expedited by leveraging integrated shipping services where retailers can print shipping labels, with real-time rate comparisons, within their POS back office software. |
Retailers should enable customers to use any eCommerce service with various pickup options. This approach allows customers to receive their merchandise as quickly as possible. It encourages purchases and prevents them from turning to competitors, including major sellers like Amazon or Walmart. By offering this flexibility, retailers can foster customer loyalty and effectively compete against big-box stores.
With the growing popularity of reading books via mobile tablets and personal devices, bookshops and similar sellers must offer digital purchase options. They can tap into this market by:
Digital marketing is essential for driving sales and building customer loyalty for bookstores. Thankfully, capturing customer information for later use in marketing campaigns is simple.
Retailers can allow customers to enroll in their marketing campaigns in different ways. An added benefit of an interconnected point of sale bookstore system is that information captured at checkout or other sources will automatically feed into your digital marketing tools.’
Targeted Marketing Campaigns via Emails and Mobile Marketing: Use customer purchase data to send personalized messages promoting new releases, events, and special offers. These can include:
| Email Type | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Abandoned Cart | Encourages customers to return to items they left in their digital shopping carts to complete the purchase. |
| Previously Viewed Item | Intrigues customers by displaying the last item they have viewed on your eCommerce website to encourage a purchase. |
| Book Club and Membership Welcome | Serves as both a friendly hello and confirmation of enrollment into your digital marketing campaigns. |
| Loyalty Rewards Reminders | Emails that send on automated periods to “remind” customers about remaining reward points or offers of point rewards. |
| Product Review | Requests the customer to leave a product review on your website or web search engines like Google and Bing. |
| Top Spender | Sends emails to customers who have higher average order values to encourage them to return to your website or store and make more purchases. |
After nailing down how you want to execute your email strategy, retailers should look into how their website is set up on the front and back-end. The front covers everything from on-page content to the formatting of text. When looking at the back-end, areas such as meta-data and page speeds need to be examined.
This is where search engine optimization becomes the next area of focus.
Enhancing your website SEO is crucial for attracting customers and improving online visibility. This is particularly effective when customers perform ‘near me’ searches or look for merchandise similar to what you sell. When implementing a search engine optimization strategy for a bookstore, there are four main types to keep in mind.
Four Types of SEO:
Considering the digital marketing tools mentioned for your book or literature-selling business, you can make your business more competitive.
Using the information from customers that they volunteer and a robust CRM system lets you dig down on analytics to get the correct offers to the right customers.
An effective POS system is not just about processing sales; it can expedite how bookshops handle their finances.
When the day’s transactions and business costs of a bookstore integrate with the shop’s point of sale system, financial management becomes an additional screen in the software. This eliminates the need for a separate program that requires hours of imports, CSV files, and sheet balancing.
This is doubly helpful when retailers use programs that might otherwise not be easy to integrate, like Quickbooks or Sage100. Sellers can gain the following time-saving benefits by using point of sale accounting software for bookstores.
| Integration Use | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Automation | Reduces the possibilities of double-data entry or missing information. Transactions flow into your accounting software directly from the POS system. No more manual entry and time saved for staff and owners dealing with the physical chores of pounding on a keyboard. |
| Financial Accuracy | The software handles taxes and reporting, meaning retailers don't need to extract the information manually. Users can manipulate individual information sets and pull analyses to report to the appropriate authority.. |
| Inventory Management | Inventory data can feed into the accounting software, giving you real-time perspective on merchandise. This helps to prevent stock-outs and purchasing too much inventory, and it helps to reduce the purchase of not enough merchandise. |
Additional benefits of integrating the accounting software into your bookshop POS system include tracking book checkouts and adjusting prices. This also applies to loyalty, memberships, or loyal book club members.
Implementing a sophisticated POS system with extensive integration capabilities is no longer optional for bookshops aiming to thrive in the digital age. They need to use every tool available to them to thrive and remain competitive.
From enhancing financial management and expanding marketplace reach to improving customer engagement and optimizing inventory, the right POS system can transform the operations of a bookshop, making it more efficient, competitive, and profitable.
Investing in such technology simplifies daily operations and sets the foundation for sustained growth and customer satisfaction.
