At Bira, we’re always interested in bringing you useful information that can help you to grow your store.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with Pointy from Google to bring you their insight on what they think will be the big retail trends of 2021.

First up, we’re looking at window shopping and how it’s moving online. Due to quarantine restrictions and safety concerns, more shoppers are turning online to find products they need in nearby stores.

Watch the video below or read the transcript to see how the trend is changing shopping and what you can do to meet consumer expectations.

Video transcript

As always, with a new year comes new trends in the world of retail. Retailers faced many challenges in 2020 and they met them with creativity and innovation. New ways of selling and fast adoption of digital tools were born out of necessity this past year and many will continue to shape the retail industry in 2021.

With safety concerns and stay at home orders prohibiting in-store shopping, shoppers are taking age-old window shopping online to “digital window shopping.” As shoppers move from bricks to clicks, now could be a great time to invest in your digital presence.

Firstly, if you already have a website and are looking for tips to optimise it, visit growmystore.thinkwithgoogle.com. Enter your store’s website, industry type, and if you sell in-store or online, and you’ll get a report and tips for strengthening your website.

During the past year, we’ve actually seen a spike in “near me” searches on Google and a desire to support local businesses. Stores can take advantage of this by building out their online presence, using social media and their website to showcase their products, and by doing their best to show up online where shoppers are searching.

If you haven’t already, look into getting your products online. In Google, we have several offerings that can help you get your products online without e-commerce. The Product Editor lets you manually add products to your Business Profile. Simply navigate to your Google My Business account then click ’Products’ to add products manually.

Or Pointy from Google automatically adds products to Google as you scan your barcodes at the register.

To go a step further, you could consider trialling ads to target nearby shoppers so that they know that you stock what they want. Pointy’s ProductAds help you to attract nearby shoppers to your store by showing them ads for your products. All you have to do is set a budget and radius and you’re good to go - and Pointy actually comes with a £100 voucher to try it out. You can run ads for as little as £3 a day, so they’re worth a try.

Ultimately, the key takeaway is that you need to show up where shoppers are. Increasingly, that’ll be a mix of in-store

About Pointy

Thanks to Pointy from Google for teaming up with us for this short video series. Pointy from Google helps you to attract nearby shoppers to your store by displaying your products on Google. As we have teamed up with Pointy, the service is free for Bira members.

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