How Retailers Can Streamline the Checkout Experience

It is the age of experimentation at the front end, with technology galore entering the scene in a bid to streamline the shopper experience. But are these efforts falling on deaf ears? Perhaps, because there’s a fine line between helping and confusing a shopper, and innovations such as self-checkouts have notoriously frustrated both customers and associates alike with glitches, malfunctions and unclear directions.

Adding fuel to the fire, consumers identified “quick-and-easy” checkout as an “absolute requirement” for them, but they also said checkout is the top “pain point” of the shopping trip, with 48% revealing that a poor checkout experience would discourage them from returning to a store, according to research from Stamford, Conn.-based Daymon Worldwide’s 2018 Private Brands Intelligence Report.

Creating a tantalizing front end that makes the most of the space and a queue that moves with ease is no simple task, but WGB is here to break down some solutions and curate some forward-thinking ideas that could make the feat less daunting.

Self-Checkout May Soon be Obsolete

According to the Daymon research study, shoppers’ main gripes with self-checkouts were waiting too long for attendants to show up, not enough room and difficulty looking up a fresh item. But while seven in 10 shoppers have used self-checkout in the past year, only 11% claimed to have used a mobile device or smartphone app to scan items while they shopped. There are plenty of innovative options out there to help avoid the headaches that come with self-checkout, but many retailers appear to be lagging in adopting these useful tools.

Related:Millennials Don’t Like Interacting With Cashiers During Checkout

One example of a new frontier of self-service shopping lets customers scan as they you go and pay at a kiosk, which have been slowly entering the scene. Some retailers even have expanded it to work with a smartphone app, as opposed to a handheld device.

Retailers such as Sam’s Club have taken this a step further by allowing shoppers to pay on the app and skip the checkout line altogether through a Scan & Go program. Conversely, Walmart, which owns Sam’s Club, gave this option a test run and decided to discontinue it.

“This technology might be more convenient for the shopper, but a retailer must monitor the door as customers leave,” the Daymon report warns. “This will require extreme diligence from supermarkets, in particular, that have multiple entry points with shoppers leaving with high item-count baskets.”

While this solution may not have all of the kinks worked out quite yet, easing the time spent scanning items could be a good compromise until a better option is available.

What’s in Store for the Future?

Checkout technology on the horizon, according to the Daymon report, includes a collaboration between IBM and a Shell gas station that can scan an entire basket of items at once and allows shoppers to pay with an app; a 360-degree laser scanner that can read the barcodes of a collection of items and allows payment through a biometric verification system based on scans of palm vein patterns, which is being tested at a 7-Eleven in Seoul; and Alipay’s “Smile-to-Pay” facial scan and mobile device verification.

Perhaps most notably, a “just throw it in the cart” automated checkout system was showcased at the 2018 National Retail Federation Show. It uses computer vision to identify items as they are placed in the shopping cart, detect theft situations that can be audited by store associates, and allows shoppers to pay straight from the cart.

Real-World Solutions for Easing Scan Time

Image courtesy of Digimarc

For an even simpler solution, retailers need look no further than Digimarc’s barcode, which according to Heidi Dethloff, VP of marketing, puts “code in your color.” By placing the code across the entire package, the solution gets rid of the age-old UPC code that requires cashiers to scan a product in a specific spot on the packaging, allowing staff to chat as they work and significantly speeding up the checkout process.

Digimarc’s technology can also be applied to thermal labels, so that when shoppers purchase something from a deli, for instance, that requires another staff member to slap a label on it, a potentially crinkled package does not slow down the checkout process.

“If that data bar, or the UPC, gets damaged, it can’t scan,” Dethloff says. “If cashiers have a long line, they may just punch in anything or try to guesstimate how much it costs. Whereas the Digimarc barcode is across the entire package and doesn’t have to rely on just that physical symbol.”

Digimarc conducted studies with three large-format grocers and general merchandise retailers comparing the scanning performance of a Digimarc barcode vs. the traditional UPC barcode at checkout and found that its proprietary barcodes increased items scanned per minute by 23%, “which represents cost and time savings for the retailer,” Dethloff says. Wegmans and New Seasons Market were early adopters of the technology and have had success with it, she says.

Queuing Up

Perhaps the simplest way for retailers to ease their checkout experience is to ensure the queuing area is streamlined and is not confusing to shoppers.

Research from Hershey suggests an active queue such as an “L” or “U” design that offers a clear shopper path and entry points avoids the “free-for-all” created by a standard straight-line design and typically has a 46% higher buyer conversion.

“Engagement is measured in terms of helpful and friendly cashiers, as well as offering the optimal merchandising solutions,” says Joey Hendrix, team lead for Hershey Insights Driven Performance Every Day Strategy. “As with convenience, shoppers continue to convey that good customer service is an important part of the checkout experience. However, shoppers are now expressing the desire to have wider checkout lanes, as the current spacing is too tight and feels like a cattle shoot.”

Money Machine Magic

Cummins Allison has new machines on the market that feature digital screens that display moving graphics and videos, which play when the machines are idle.

“These on-screen displays help to attract attention to the machines while shoppers are in-store and can increase utilization and overall profitability of the machines,” says Jim Weaks, VP of Mount Prospect, Ill.-based currency handling technology company Cummins Allison.

Since placing machines with these digital displays, Cummins Allison has seen an increase in average volume per grocery store. That means grocers who have machines with these digital displays have seen an increase in use and traffic to the machines.

Hershey’s 6 Tenets of Queuing

1. Queuing creates social justice—first come, first served. Because 40%-60% of transactions can occur at self-checkouts, it’s important to ensure social justice.

2. Ensure there is clear signage on where to enter/wait. It seems obvious today, but early designs did not have it and it created confusion.

3. Make sure the shelving in the line is only 42-48 inches above the finished floor and is not so long that shoppers disengage.

4. Make sure queue lines are ADA compliant and allow shoppers to bypass one another if someone is dwelling.

5. Offer only relevant items.

6. Offer less impulsive items such as general merchandise at entry and offer higher impulsive items toward the end. There is more time to dwell at the entry, when shoppers are engaging general merchandise. There is less time toward the end of the queue, where items such as candy, mints and gum should be offered.