How Optical Software Customizes The In-store Shopping Experience

Customers are at the heart of any optical retail business. They are your brand ambassadors because you typically connect with local customers, and you will also receive orders from the same consumers repeatedly. Hence, maintaining customer relationships is essential as an optical retailer and optical software can help you. Moreover, it is essential for your optical retail business’s success. 

“The thing is, I don’t want to be sold to when I walk into a store. I want to be welcomed.”

– Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple Inc.

Optical retailers need to stay on top of fashion trends. Moreover, they must know what is selling well. Furthermore, they need to invest in inventory that matches their customer demographic, just like any “fashion” store. Therefore, POS Systems for Retail Stores come into the picture.

Optical retailers need to stay on top of fashion trends. Moreover, they must know what is selling well. Furthermore, they need to invest in inventory that matches their customer demographic, just like any “fashion” store. Therefore, POS Systems for Retail Stores come into the picture.

The optical industry is unique. However, optical stores must think of themselves as retailers. It will be best to use pos that is specially made for your business. For example, if you own a pharmacy, then you must use POS Pharmacy Management Software for your business. Similarly, optical store owners must implement retail optical software tools. These tools will help them drive customer satisfaction, efficiency, revenue, and profit. If you are a startup, then you can try POS System for Small Business for your optical shop.

This blog will see some business tips to customize the in-store shopping experience. Moreover, in this blog, we will cover the following topics.

• Some of the upcoming trends in the optical retail industry.
• Technologies such as optical retail software will help grow your business by customizing the in-store shopping experience.
• Tips to customize the in-store shopping experience considering COVID-19.

---

Some Of The Upcoming Trends In the Optical Retail Industry

Sometimes, as an optical retailer, you have observed that some of your customers are looking out for a particular item. some customers are very particular about what they want. Moreover, in their minds, there will be an image of a product, before they step into your shop.  Furthermore, the trends given below will be helpful to customize their in-store shopping experience.

1) Customization Or Personalization: USP For Optical Software

2) Sports Eyewear For Athletes:

Sports lovers have their range of eyeglasses and sunglasses in their minds. Golf, cycling, water sports, winter sports, running, and other sports should cover with their design and lens technology.

This eyewear protects against rapid changes in light conditions, speed, and airborne particles, in addition to delivering crystal clear and anti-glare vision. Therefore, it is essential to keep Sports eyewear at your store to customize the in-store shopping experience.

3) Artificial Intelligence:

AI has impacted the technologies we use daily, from voice assistants to language translation tools. Artificial intelligence can do much more. It will be best if you keep such devices in your store.

That will help to deliver a great customer experience. For example, you can keep an A.I. device that will welcome your customers. Furthermore, this device can give them suggestions while they are trying frames virtually.

4) Smart Glasses:

Smart Glasses are spectacles that incorporate the wearable technology concept. Furthermore, it is helpful to improve people’s vision. In a similar vein, it serves as a platform for augmented reality (AR).

Smart glasses have been described as the next stage of mobile communications. A platform that will replace smartphones someday. But the fact is they are still in the early stages of research.

Even though Google Glass is presently the perfect representative for smart glasses. There are as many as 30 companies that are currently offering or planning to offer smart glasses.

The price points and intended end-user markets of these products differ greatly. It also represents a wide range of optical technologies, user interfaces. As a result, the development of smart glasses will open new business opportunities.

In short, it will be an I-phone moment for the optical industry. Nowadays everyone has a phone in their hand. Imagine in the future, everyone will have spectacles or sunglasses that will be used as a phone. Just like iron man glasses. Sounds great, right? But we need to prepare for the future. Believe it or not but, smart glasses will bring resolution in the optical industry.

5) Digitization And Virtualization:

6) Frames Trends For Your Optical Retail Store In Year 2022:

As we have said, an optical retail store is just like any “fashion” store. Since you need to follow the current and upcoming trends, these are some of the trends to generate more sales in the year 2022. We are pretty sure that your customers will ask you for the following frame styles.

• Bungalow Cat-Eye Sunglasses
• Translucent Eye Frames
• Wiry Metal Rimmed Glasses
• Shaded Lenses
• Square Eye wears
• Wooden Eyeglasses
• Eyeglasses With Chains
• Cat-Eyeglasses
• Aviators / Double Bars
• Oversized Silhouettes

Technologies Such As Optical Software Will Help Grow Your Business By Delivering A Great In-store Buying Experience

Retail point of service (POS) systems empower retail staff to deliver memorable service levels and build customer loyalty in an omnichannel world. In the optical retail business, optical software plays an important role. Furthermore, it helps to boost sales.

a) Inventory Management To Customize Instore Shopping Experience:

In most cases, the optical retail stores find Frame inventory management challenges. As a result, it eats their profits—optical software help to manage accurate frame inventory. It helps to manage their inventories of frames, eyewear, sunglasses, lens, contact lens, solutions, etc. Excellent optical retail software for retail stores makes business more profitable.  

Software for the optical industry must be unique. It should allow you to manage inventory with various parameters such as type, size, color, gender, make, brand, material, quality, shape, etc. It becomes effortless to generate orders using optical retail software. If you own multiple chains of optical stores, you should use POS software.

b) Data Record Keeping: The Best Feature Of Optical Software

The most crucial role of optical retail software in your store is customer data in digital format that can be easily retrieved or searched when required. Therefore, it should have all required fields and data points to store your customer’s vital information.

For example, Full name, Date of Birth, Date of the anniversary, Customer Age in years and months. Moreover, Complete address with PIN code, Referral information, Customer group, Special notes, etc. The most critical data for your customer is their eye testing prescription records. As a result, you need robust and advanced optical software to store all the historical records for prescriptions.

c) Data Analysis With The Dashboard: Helps To Take Decisions

Once you have the data in digital format, you are ready to go. Furthermore, your next step will be to analyze your customers’ data and purchases. You can also analyze any customer concerning their eye powers and how they change. With all the analysis, you will sell more products and satisfy your customer needs very efficiently.

The optical software is helpful to understand your customer buying habits, future demands for various products, etc. All things you can see on your robust dashboard. With this analysis, you can plan expansion for more optical stores.

d) Data Usage And Promotions Management: Get More Revenue

With the data you collect and maintain, you must send alerts and reminders to your customers, making them happy and relaxed. In other words, you can send promotional content and various offers to your customers; it will help you to generate more sales. It is observed that optical stores that send (Email, SMS, promotional WhatsApp messages) can generate more business than other optical retail stores. 

In short, by using optical software or POS (point of sales) software you will be able to customize the in-store shopping experiences of your customers.

---

Tips To Customize The In-store Shopping Experience Along With Optical Retail Software Considering Covid-19

1) Paperless Billing / Invoice:

The first and most significant change is to adopt paperless billing. Therefore, you can use optical retail software to generate your bills digitally. As we all know, the coronavirus spreads physically, and paper can hold this virus for a long time.

Furthermore, if you are doing digital billing, it saves a lot of time for accounting and bookkeeping.  POS can generate and send high-quality, professional bills in PDF format for customers. Some optical software does not charge extra to send emails.

2) Eye Testing Prescription In Digital Way:

Any optical retail store’s daily routine includes eye testing and prescriptions. With the latest changes imposed by COVID-19, you can now provide your customers with digital eye testing prescriptions.

You can create a PDF document and send it to the customer’s email or WhatsApp account. As a result, with this strategy, you can prevent the spread of CORONA, and your customers will be pleased to receive a digital prescription record by email or phone. Moreover, it is accessible from anywhere, anytime. 

3) Bar-code System:

The only way to halt CORONAVIRUS from spreading is to keep social distancing. As a result, for all frames and goggles, you can use a bar-code system so that customers can try them on for themselves.

They can see the price and other details of the product quickly. They do not have to ask, and you do not have to touch and show each frame individually. Optical POS software can help you generate bar-code for any format, size, and shape you want.

---

Summary:

Today, we saw some critical tips for optical retailers. It is very helpful in inventory management, data record-keeping, data analysis, promotions management, and optimizing data to customize the in-store shopping experiences.

Furthermore, after the pandemic, you need to change the way of your business. You can go for paperless billing. In addition to that, you must give eye testing prescriptions to your customers in a digital way. Implementing a bar-code system will be helpful for retailers. 

However, it is better to consult experts to choose the perfect optical software for your optical retail store. Ari has assisted several businesses with their free consultancy services. As we all know, every business has different needs, and Ari will help you with your specific business needs.

---