At face value, it might seem that shopping baskets only serve a single purpose: to help customers gather products from the aisles and carry them to the checkout lane. However, while this is the main and most obvious application for shopping baskets, there’s more to these retail vessels than meets the eye. In fact, your arsenal of shopping baskets is a more valuable asset than you might realize. If you’re wondering how this could be, let’s dive deeper into the hidden power of shopping baskets. More specifically, we’ll go over how shopping baskets can track and increase your store’s sales.

The Benefits of Shopping Baskets

Boosting Sales with Baskets

Unless you’re successfully selling baskets to your customers, you might not understand right away how these tools can boost your profits. But the more you think about it, the more this connection begins to make sense. Without baskets (and carts, of course), shoppers are limited to purchasing what they can easily and comfortably carry between their arms (or balance on their heads if they have the skills). By having access to a shopping basket, they can grab more items off the shelf, thereby increasing your sales.

But the story doesn’t end there. Shopping baskets can help bump your numbers in other ways, too, especially in terms of promoting your brand and encouraging customers to take one just in case.

Promote Your Brand

There are so many ways for businesses to market themselves these days. Still, just because social media and search engines have largely taken over the marketing world doesn’t mean other methods of promotion aren’t still viable. Shopping baskets serve as prime branding real estate. Sure, customers using your baskets are already in your store and presumably know something about your business. However, by investing in custom shopping baskets with your logo and/or name printed on them, you’re helping to keep your brand top of mind for all your customers. It doesn’t hurt to buy baskets that match your store’s or brand’s color scheme, either. The more recognizable your brand, the more customers you’ll get, both new and repeat. And the more customers you have, the more stuff you can sell.

Make Your Baskets Seen

When your unique shopping baskets are clearly visible, more people will use them, even those who might have otherwise gone without one. Your baskets should be strategically placed and properly stacked so they can be seen at a distance and easily grabbed. The goal here is to increase impulse sales. Some shoppers may come into your store with the goal of grabbing one or two items. But if a basket is readily available in your store, especially near popular items, they may opt to grab a basket and purchase more items than they had originally planned. If your store sells a variety of small products, such as cosmetic items, it’s a good idea to place some mini shopping baskets at key points of your store, too. In other words, ensuring basket visibility, compatibility, and availability is a key component in boosting your sales.

How Do Shopping Baskets Track Sales?

If your ultimate aim as a business is to maximize profits and keep customers coming back, you need to know what people are buying, and when they’re buying it. In this regard, shopping baskets are an integral feature in tracking your store’s sales. You can always crunch the numbers in your point-of-sale system to determine what’s selling and what’s falling behind, but shopping baskets are prominent visual indicators of customer activity without the wait time or detailed analysis.

The first step in tracking sales using baskets is to initially determine where basket stacks should go. You can use prior sales numbers to get a sense of which aisles or areas of your store receive the most activity. With this data in mind, you may decide to strategically place in-store baskets near high-traffic areas. Or, you might place more baskets near lower-traffic areas in an attempt to increase sales of those less popular or less noticed items. Make sure you know exactly how many baskets you place in each stack for each location. This will allow you to keep track of how many baskets were taken from a given stack.

Additionally, if applicable, consider which types of baskets you’re placing in each area of your store. If you have different basket sizes, such as small, medium, and big baskets, place the right-sized baskets near items that correspond with their capacity. For example, place smaller or mini baskets near smaller products and larger baskets near things like bulk-packaged paper towels or cat litter. This won’t just help you boost sales, but also help you track whether customers are grabbing baskets for certain items.

Once you have enough information provided by the movement of your shopping baskets, you can regroup and decide whether or not to change up where you’re placing basket stacks, and if there are enough or too many baskets in each location. You may find that it’s better to redistribute some of your baskets to encourage and maximize sales.

Your shopping baskets are so much more than just carrying cases for groceries and retail items. They’re also promotional and strategic tools. With the right baskets and proper placement, you can track customer behavior and increase sales. Who knew that shopping baskets could handle so many responsibilities? Good L Corporation delivers innovative shopping cart and basket solutions for retailers on a global scale.

From a fleet of custom shopping carts to launch your store opening to replacement baskets that supplement your existing shop supply, Good L Corp can configure the right carryall strategy to boost your retail business. Let’s get started! Contact us today for a no-pressure sales quote.