POS in-store experience

Utilising Magento to enhance the in-store shopping experience

We are entering an age of huge shifts in point of sale (POS) technologies.

Gone are the days of the typical old cash register – big, bulky equipment that everyone can familiarise themselves with through the instantly recognisable ‘ker-ching’ noise – these mandatory pieces of shop furniture are rapidly being replaced by tablet based devices which give any store the perception of a retailer at the forefront of the digital age.

Tablet based POS applications have exploded onto the market in recent years with the likes of Square, Vend, Lightspeed, Breadcrumb, to name a few, taking a real leap in successfully promoting the cloud based POS opportunities for the high street retailer. POS as a Service, where retailers commit to a monthly service fee, introduce a lower than ever entry cost, putting such solutions in greater reach to the independent SME than ever before.

We at ebizmarts have been active in the marketplace from the early Magento days and in that time we have helped over 22,000 retailers with their payment and email marketing extensions. It was just over 2 years ago that we spotted an opportunity. That opportunity combined our expertise in Magento with the advent of the tablet based POS to create the only tablet based POS application that is native to Magento… ebizmarts POS is born… an enterprise grade Point of Sale App that enables the selling of your Magento products in the store environment for a true Omnichannel experience.

But what problem are we trying to solve?

OK, the iPad certainly looks far more sexier sitting on a counter than the legacy ‘ker-ching’ its replacing, but tablet POS solutions go beyond the aesthetics. The iPad and the iPhone now put the power of the POS in the palm of the sales assistant’s hand and that in itself changes the in store experience for the consumer.

I draw upon a recent experience:

After placing the desired shoe in the hand of the sales assistant in the first shoe shop, 5 minutes had elapsed before the ‘sorry we don’t have that size in stock’ response was received. To be fair, the assistant did have the savviness to also state ‘but you can order it online when you get home later’, however, did ‘later’ ever come? No! Why? Because in the second shoe shop, when again they didn’t have my size in stock, the assistant reappeared with an iPad with the response ‘I can order them online for you here and now’. Intrigued with the process I did continue the order and watched the assistant go online to the www. site place the order for me. Not a seamless process I admit, but a process that acquired my business.

Online retailers are always looking at new techniques to increase the conversion of consumers from browsers to buyers. The use of a mobile POS now does exactly that for the in-store experience. It puts the power back into the shop floor assistant to increase in-store conversion by putting stock and product information at their fingertips. It also allows the consumer to ‘checkout’ at any location within the store, gone are the days of the consumer needing to queue up at the till to purchase goods.

We at ebizmarts are on an exciting journey, talking to, deploying and continually enhancing our POS solution in a number of recognised Magento stores. Our system allows customers to deploy a cloud based tablet POS with the click of a button, instantly pulling the products, descriptions, pricing, customers, coupons, returns and customer orders from Magento. We are assisting in changing the face of in-store commerce and providing a feature rich & unique extension to the Magento community which hundreds of retailers are already using all over the world. If you are thinking about a native Magento POS solution then look no further than ebizmarts… we are more than happy to help!