The opportunities available to the lottery industry and how to make it work with intuitive Point of Sale
Written by John Barrett, Managing Director of Fastrak
If you can get a customer to buy more, great! If you can get customers to buy something that has a better profit margin, so much the better.
Retailers have been upselling at the till as long as retailing began. With consumer habits changing and savvy retailers looking to make the most of every customer, a new wave of retail strategy selling to consumers as they wait to pay, has opened the world of in-lane selling.
Major retailers across the world are trialling a range of products to sell at the till area, where many are now realising the opportunity this retail space provides. Retail is now in a race to discover the best mix of products to tempt consumers. In recent months one of the most successful products added in-lane has been lottery games and scratch cards.
However, it’s not as simple as just adding a lottery scratch card to a shelf, the design of specialist in-lane point of sale display units has become a valued art, with our experts at Fastrak designing ever more sophisticated and eye-catching ways to sell lottery games in-lane. Today we’re sharing some of our thoughts on what makes the perfect in-lane lottery retail experience.
Allow for impulse purchases.
Most major retailers use their kiosk to sell lottery products, however a clear majority of consumers will bypass it if they are not purposefully going in to buy products specifically sold there. This takes away the huge opportunity to up-sell to millions passing through the store. An in-lane lottery solution allows retailers to both be a destination store for lottery games, and gives the chance to upsell to every other shopper in the store.
Think profit.
Every retailer is looking to make a good profit. Therefore, if you are willing to put chewing gum in-lane, why not lottery? Especially when dollar-for-dollar, lottery out sells chewing gum globally by a factor of 10 to 1. The opportunities and potential difference in increased sales and profit is huge.
Lottery brands and retailers are realising the opportunity.
If the opportunity is there, why hasn’t it been done before? Well the truth of the matter is that lottery brands have not really considered it possible until now. The ever-increasing focus that retailers are placing on in-lane sales has opened new opportunities for lottery companies, which are really starting to understand the potential for increased sales.
It’s time to slim down.
The first design challenge you have around in-lane point of sale display is that space is tight – really tight. Therefore, whatever retail point-of-sale display solution used needs to address this head on. Also, lottery games come in two types, draw based games and scratch cards. Scratch cards are bulky, which resulted in our Fastrak in-lane retail team developing a super slim and integrated design.
Keep familiarity.
Our designers developed a way to streamline our POD design creating a unit that uses a small footprint yet looks very much like our familiar modular scratch card dispenser – a design that is now recognised by consumers around the world. The new design includes a slimline display unit with a door into which a void card can be placed for display and promotion. The till operator is then able to safely distribute live product from a separate draw below the counter.
We were the first company in the world to take this approach and, in my mind, it was the ingenuity to keep the same recognisable design whilst slimming them down to fit the space that made our solution such an instant success. People automatically related to the display.
Safe and secure.
Security is a big consideration when designing point of sale display solutions for the lottery industry. After all, there could be a million-pound prize on one card. With that in mind you can’t just have consumers taking them for themselves! The in-lane lottery solution is no different splitting the slimline display with a secure till holding the cards managed by the till operator.
Innovation is the future.
Design and innovation is in our DNA at Fastrak and we are already developing a range of new in-lane delivery methods which securely allow consumers to dispense a card themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if this new type of in-lane display were also seen in retailers soon.
The art of communication.
Using our knowledge of lottery retail, we categorise games by type, cost and format, creating different ways of clearly separating those categories. The retail environment can be very busy and if you look at products that are too tightly packed, they all look the same. It’s just a mass of colour and shape. We have therefore framed games and organised them.
Focus the eye.
Not only is it important to categorise products or lottery games, but it is also vital that you focus a consumer’s attention. We’ve therefore developed feature game frames to celebrate seasonal or topical games. These serve two important roles, firstly they draw the consumer into a product, and secondly it makes the product topical allowing the retailer to switch the consumers focus to whichever game is more relevant.
The benefits of increased sales and exposure to 100% of people in the shop is significant and something that the lottery industry is now very much alert to.
Through the new lottery in-lane solutions developed at Fastrak, not only have sales of scratch card games vastly increase, but retailers have also seen an increase in draw based games simply through greater brand awareness at the till. In my view, in-lane selling is the next big retail trend for the lottery industry.
Fastrak Lottery solutions are world leaders in providing specialist point of sale display solutions to the lottery industry offering the most extensive and advanced range of lottery point of sale display products available anywhere in the world.
For more information on Fastrak Lottery Solutions, visit www.fastrakls.com email [email protected] or call UK (+44 (0)1625 439966), Australia (+61 411 552 393), Hong Kong/China (+852 3755 4511) or The Unites States (+1 212 729 1990).
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