How to Attract Holiday Shoppers with a Clean, Inviting Retail Atmosphere

‘Tis the season for holiday shopping! Historically the holiday shopping season brings in more sales than any other time of year for many retailers, along with new customers to impress. During this time, it is important that stores are maintained and cleaned properly to attract shoppers and boost sales. Below are facility maintenance tips to ensure your retail stores are looking their best to satisfy shoppers, provide a pleasant shopping experience and ultimately increase your bottom line.

Make Floors Sparkle

Puddles, scuff marks and salt can quickly make store floors look dirty and dingy, putting a damper on the holiday shopping spirit. Floors are one of the first things that shoppers notice, and it is important to keep them clean and dry for safety reasons as well. Thoroughly clean floors on a routine basis and ensure floor mats are in place at entrances to capture moisture and debris before they enter your store. Be sure to check high-traffic areas often and clean up any spills or debris in a timely manner.

As a proactive approach to protect floors and make them shine, consider using EZ CARE Floor Coating by SC Johnson Professional®. Achieve a durable, high-gloss shine on a variety of substrates using no more than 4 coats. Utilize the EZ Care Heavy Duty Scrub pad along with the Neutral Floor Cleaner to maintain the floor’s high-gloss appearance and effectively remove scuffs, scratches and black heel marks, so your floors will sparkle throughout the peak shopping season.  

Clean High-Touch Areas Often

In addition to holiday cheer, germs are unfortunately spread during the holiday shopping season. Clean common touchpoints often with an effective hard surface cleaner and disinfectant that is proven to kill pathogens and help prevent the spread of germs to both employees and customers. Areas to focus on include door handles, check-out counters, elevator buttons, restroom surfaces and dressing room areas.

To streamline hard surface cleaning, consider using the TruShot 2.0® Mobile Dispensing System by SC Johnson Professional®. This patented spray-and-wipe cleaning system provides optimized dilution delivery at the pull of the trigger. It is an easy-to-use system that requires no mixing, measuring or stopping – simply fill the on-board water reservoir and go! Its intuitive design enables cleaning crews to use it instantly, which is ideal for quickly training seasonal workers.

Keep Restrooms Spotless

Clean, odor-free restrooms help elevate the shopping experience and keep customers coming back. Ensure that restrooms are meticulously cleaned daily with a dependable hard surface cleaner and assign an employee or a few to regularly check the restroom to make sure it stays fresh and fully stocked.

Beyond keeping restrooms clean, consider offering quality skin care products for employees and customers. SC Johnson Professional® offers Refresh™ AntiBac FOAM, an antimicrobial foam handwash that provides a fresh, signature citrus fragrance. It also contains skin moisturizer to help prevent drying and leave the skin feeling smooth. Consider also offering a lightly-fragranced conditioning cream, such as the SC Johnson Professional® SBS® 40, to further help employees and customers ward off dry skin during the winter months.

On the topic of hand hygiene, keeping hand sanitizer stocked throughout key areas of your retail store, including checkout areas and entrances keeps hand hygiene top of mind for employees and guests. A solution like SC Johnson Professional’s InstantFOAM™ Complete PURE is a fantastic option. This solution is skin hypoallergenic, perfume- and dye-free and kills 99.99% of many common germs, making it an ideal option for holiday shoppers.

Track and Audit Your Cleaning Program

To ensure that your cleaning program is being executed correctly, consider using technology to help manage and streamline your efforts. SC Johnson Professional offers faciliscan™, a software program designed and built for custodial maintenance management. The mobile facility auditing application helps ease the facility cleaning process by simplifying quality assurance audits, managing performance and helping to build workload estimates for corrective actions. This helps retail facility managers identify areas of improvement, manage expectations and prioritize cleanliness.

The holiday season is often thought of as the most wonderful time of the year, but it can also be a stressful time for retail facility managers. By taking a proactive approach and preparing stores ahead of time with a proactive cleaning plan and the right products in place, you can provide shoppers with a cheerful shopping experience so you can focus on increasing your sales revenue.