Why Businesses on the Go Should Upgrade to a Mobile POS
This is a guest post.
If you own a business on the go, you’re a risk taker who can’t afford to be wrong. If you have a storefront and a mobile outreach center, whether that’s anything from a roving craft table at craft fairs, a food truck, or anything in between, you have to make the right call. Where should you go, how much inventory should you bring, what should you be prepared for. It’s all on you, and every time you make the call and gear up for your next stop, you’re taking a risk. With all of that in mind, getting a new point of sale system can feel like the biggest gamble you can take. The truth is that a mobile point of sale system will serve your business’s need, both current ones you already know of and any future ones you haven’t anticipated. Your business is going to grow and expand as you keep making the right choices. A mobile POS system, like Shopify offers, is able to grow and expand with you, offering flexible options to keep your business secure, strong, and organized, even when you have more and more on your plate.
Accept Credit Cards Anywhere You Go
In this day and age, any business that can’t accept a credit card is only limiting themselves. If you have a truck, stall, or booth set up and you accept cash only, you be at a disadvantage compared to those who accept cards as well. When you’re selling to a customer using a credit or debit card, you could potentially sell as much as they have total available funds to buy. The same is true with cash in that you can sell as much as their cash will cover, but 50 percent of Americans carry less than $20 in cash on an average day, according to the Washington Post. This means that your potential sale has already plummeted from “everything they have” to “whatever is still in their wallet.” This kind of drop in on-hand cash can keep customers away from impulse purchases, as they would have to leave, get cash, and come back. Yes, it might feel easier to accept cash only and avoid the fees and other costs associated with having a card reader, but you’re also cutting yourself off from, or at least severely limiting your true sales potential. A good mobile POS system has an easy to use credit card reader that makes it simple and profitable to be able to accept cash and plastic with equal ease. This is especially true if your business routinely has to compete with many others, such as when you’re one booth of many in a farmer’s market. Someone could easily have spent their money before getting to your stall. While they wouldn’t leave the market and run to the nearest ATM, they might be able to justify breaking their budget and running their card to get a couple extra goodies before they go. Being able to accept credit cards makes you much more competitive.
Check on Your Store Even When You’re Not There
Another great thing about mobile point of sale systems is that you can use the inventory checker to automatically check how sales are going back at home. If you hate being on the road because you’re worried about your main location (but if you stay there you can’t stop worrying about how it’s going on the road) then a mobile point of sale system is exactly what you need. You can use it to interface with the POS machine back at your store so that you can see how sales are doing no matter where you are.
Easily Add a Website to Your Locations
If you have only two store locations, a home base and a mobile setup, you’re missing out on additional opportunities online. Online sales are a huge boost for any business. Even if you only have a website one day a year you can really cash in if you choose Cyber Monday as that day, as total sales on Cyber Monday 2013 topped $2 billion, according to Digiday. A mobile point of sale system navigates the Internet with ease, making it a snap to update and change your website when you need to. You can even make sure that your site reflects when products are sold out in stores so that you don’t end up double selling an item.
Reduce Human Error
Nobody’s perfect, and even your most trusted employee is going to make a few mistakes. With that in mind, you can work to cut down human error by adopting intuitive systems like those offered by mobile touch screen tablets. Even doing something as simple as switching from entering data by hand to using a portable barcode scanner will lower your error rate and improve efficiency, according to the Houston Chronicle. This means your clerks will spend less time hunting for errors and more time making sure that your customers are happy with their purchase and your service.
