A Four-Step Process to Flawless Store Audits!

Shop audits are a valuable tool for tracking your store’s performance, whether your retail business has one location or a dozen.

Retail audits provide deep insights into your retail business by assessing the effectiveness of your displays, managing your inventory, ensuring you’re presenting the best possible version of your store, and making specific inventory management tasks complete on schedule.

Retail audits for retail businesses now play a new role and provide more insights than ever, thanks to modern technological advancements. But for merchants who have never conducted a store audit, the task may seem overwhelming.

For simple and quick insights into your retail store performance, we’ll cover the advantages and procedures of conducting a store audit in this guide.

Why Audits of Stores Are Crucial

Your business processes must adapt as the retail market does. Retail audits are a dated method of keeping tabs on your operations, but it’s critical to do so as your sales channels expand and become more intricate.

The store experience is more significant than ever as retailers use omnichannel strategies and click-and-collect matures. And it’s up to the field teams to guarantee an excellent customer experience.

Maintaining current, accurate stock numbers to maintain enough inventory to satisfy your in-store requirements and any other channels you are currently supporting is necessary. Shop audits are one way to ensure clients have the best display experience in your stores. Not having enough stock in stock and not having shelves set and displayed correctly can make for a bad shopping experience.

Store audits are a fantastic way to help your salespeople and retail staff grow. Use the audit as an opportunity to collaborate with your team to improve the company by using the audit results for purposes other than merely monitoring numbers.

1. Plan your audit of the store

To complete the audit without interfering with the customer experience, allow enough time in your schedule. The best time to finish audits is when business is slow and you have enough staff to effectively complete the audit while still being able to run your everyday operations.

However, remember that doing so would require scheduling additional resources outside regular business hours. You can also finish the audit when the store is closed.

2. Establish your store audit objectives.

Before you begin the retail audit, list your objectives, including what you hope to accomplish and any areas that you believe will need extra attention. Make sure to allow enough time to examine each in-store display to determine if they are not looking their best.

Remember to include the audit of your building’s exterior as well. After all, this is a customer’s first impression of your company as they enter the building. A burnt-out light or an overflowing trash can could have an impact on how they perceive your company.

3. Keep detailed records as you audit.

Take thorough notes while carrying out your audit (or ask the outside vendor doing it to do so). Additionally, document the audit results with pictures as you go so you can later compare before and after shots of the fixes.

4. Provide staff with fixes.

As soon as your resources and budget permit after you’ve finished your shop audit, assign tasks to staff members, independent contractors, or outside organizations. Even if you can only afford to change something in the next quarter, scheduling and recording the change will guarantee that everything is noticed and completed on the next scheduled audit.