6 useful apps for boutique owners and small retail businesses

Successful boutique owners and small business retailers are known for developing strong relationships with their customers. Customers may feel like boutique owners “get” their style and want to support local businesses that speak to their fashion and design sensibilities.

In order to cultivate important customer relationships and grow a business, boutique owners need to be highly engaged with customers on an ongoing basis–through a consultative sales approach and customer-centered communication. It’s important to have a system in place that nurtures customer relationships, helps you manage business operations, and saves you time.

With Clover’s retail point-of-sale (POS) system, boutique owners and small business retailers can choose from a curated suite of apps that are uniquely tailored to their needs. Here are six of the best apps for boutique owners and small business retailers.

Manage inventory

1. To get your boutique up and running, BigCommerce is an all-in-one app that can help you launch a beautiful online storefront, organize your inventory, handle payment processing, and even connect with social media and marketplace channels.
2. Small retailers also love Thrive Inventory, an analytics platform that helps you distinguish your best-selling items from those that aren’t selling at all. It reports profitability per item, category, sales channel, or entire business. As a result, you get a big-picture view that can help increase sales and reduce cost.
3. SKU IQ keeps your data updated and synced across your brick-and-mortar and online stores, with sales, inventory, and customer data tracking. You can even set-up curbside pickup. Bonus: it integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, and BigCommerce.

   Increase sales with customer loyalty and rewards

4. Clover Customer Engagement is actually a whole suite of apps designed to support those personal connections you make in-store. You can have direct and private conversations through Feedback, respond to those conversations with Promos, cultivate loyalty with Rewards, and get to know your Customers better by collecting and organizing their data. Check out how these merchants increased their sales with Clover Customer Engagement!

   Increase visibility

5. Since boutiques often cater to niche crowds, online visibility is even more important for them. Pointy helps customers find your inventory on Google when they search for a particular item. It also displays your items across Google Business Profile and Maps, and it lets you run product ads on Google.

   Help customers spread the love

6. Your Clover boutique POS already accepts all payment types. Add Gift Cards as an option to encourage customers to be more spontaneous in their purchases and buy larger-ticket items. The Gift Card app can create digital or physical gift cards, manage gift card balances, and accept gift cards from your customer’s phone. You can even use gift cards as promos when customers buy them for themselves.

For more on these applications, connect with a Clover Business Consultant to get a demo of the Clover App Market, where a growing selection of apps can help you improve the efficiency, reach, and profitability of your boutique or small retail business.