What's Your Sign?

7 Ways to Increase Sales with Signs

– Debbie Allen

Signs play a very important role in retail. They help you get attention, sell products and promote your business brand. Information from signage directly influences consumer purchases. That is why it is so important to get it right.

I recently noticed an antique store that placed their sign sideways for drivers to view, but didn’t have a sign on the building. So when you were looking at the store from across the street in town, you could not tell what type of business it was. Another sign I noticed was so badly in need of repair that it left a very negative and poor image about the business. Your sign is not only there to get noticed, it sets the tone and image of your organization. [Get the full story]

Retail Greeters: Sales Builders or Customer Turnoff?

– John Di Frances

Do you need greeters or should you avoid them? That is the perplexing question many retail organizations are struggling with today. Often touted in the press as the perennial example of the benefits to employing greeters, Wal-Mart has hung on to its practice faithfully. But does it work and if so, will merely placing any warm body with a forced smile at the door to your store do the trick of converting entering customers into satisfied shoppers? [Get the full story]

If Only My Software Could Do…

Custom Programming Made Easy

– Don Capman, President, J.D. Associates

There are so many times when I’m using my various software applications that I wish the particular solution would do something that it doesn’t do. Like everyone else in the world, I am a hostage to Microsoft. I just open the box, install the CD and live by its rules. BRAVE NEW WORLD is actually here. I feel that my life has been engineered by Microsoft. I even have a few Microsoft shirts for when it’s appropriate to wear the “uniform.” This month I will be attending the Worldwide Microsoft Partner Conference in Boston to receive further indoctrination. Well, it might seem like I’m complaining, but as I remember cranking out term papers on my manual portable Smith Corona typewriter in college, I think how much easier life would have been if I had the technology we have today. I do, however, miss the white out…. [Get the full story]