For many people, shopping is a way to relax. Window-shopping and buying things on a whim makes some people feel happier. When people are relaxed, they are confident about making big decisions like spending money. That is why it is important for shopping places in the real world to allow for a stress-free experience for shoppers. The more relaxed a shopper is, the more focused the shopper can be on shopping instead of things not related to it. Unless the stress arises from the pricing or the store itself, based on my personal experience, here are 2 very simple steps stores can take to offer customers a stress-free shopping experience.

1. Make necessary shopping tools easily available to a customer.

Giving a customer all the necessary tools to find an item and its details increase the chances of that customer actually buying something. A good example of this is the discount signs in retail stores. Many retail stores usually have discounts on multiple items, and most of the times these discounts are not reflected on the actual price tags on items. Price scanners located throughout the store can help customers by allowing them to scan any item under a scanner and find out the exact prices and any eligible discounts. Without such scanners, shoppers have to go through the hassle of hunting down staff members to find out the exact prices for different things. Usually, customers will get fed up of going back and forth between the cashiers and different departments, and may end up not buying something because of the hassle involved.

Similarly, making it a nice experience for customers to browse through a store helps customers relax. Having disorganized aisles and unclear item displays add stress, resulting in customers unconsciously not wanting to shop at such stores in the future. That’s why many people I know prefer going to Target instead of Kmart, because Target is well organized while Kmart, going through a huge reorganization, looks like it survived a nearby tornado. I went to a few Kmarts last week to look for some hard drives. The staff did not even know that they carried hard drives, and it took me a few hours to look through the disorganized and messy electronics section myself to find out that they did carry hard drives, but not the ones I was wanted. I may have a trauma one day thinking of going through the dirty aisles at Kmart again while the staff follows me on a “What does this aisle carry?” discovery spree.

2. Reduce outside stress for customers

Shopping stores should act like shells. The same way the shell of an egg protects the contents and the life within, a shopping store should enclose and protect the customers from any outside factors and stress that may affect their mood in a negative manner. Stress can come from unrelated elements that may actually be seen by the store as incentives to get people to come back to the store more often. Outside noise, outside lights and outside issues should be blocked from the domain of the store itself. If that is not possible, efforts should be made to minimize any outside interference as much as possible. If a customer can feel they are in a different environment when they enter a store, they will feel mentally refreshed. Happy customers now mean happier and satisfied customers in the long run. Stressed-out customers and customers who feel rushed may actually end up avoiding a particular store in the future.

I saw a couple last week in Macy’s where the husband was happily browsing the aisles while telling his wife in great detail what he thought of the dresses she was trying on. Once he sat down in one of the waiting rooms fitted with a TV which showed CNN’s coverage of the world, his mood quickly changed and he got more serious. He tried changing the channel and found out that CNN was the only available channel. After a while, he started offering his wife shorter and more serious responses, like “That’s ugly” and “That looks weird.” In the end, his wife did not buy anything. The couple left the store empty handed, with the husband feeling more serious and the wife feeling a bit sad. All of this happened simply because of Macy’s putting a TV in the waiting room that showed something that many stress-free-wannabe customers would not like to think about when they are shopping and relaxing.

The above two steps can easily fix the issues shown in the examples that follow them. Kmart prices are cheaper than Target for many items, but a stress-free environment that saves time and hassle at Target results in many customers favoring Target over Kmart. I’m looking forward to the progress of the huge reorganizations going on at Kmart, which may result in the shopping experience getting better. Similarly, the husband at Macy’s got moody because of watching some news that he may have had a strong opinion about, and the change in his attitude resulted in the wife not buying anything. If a TV must be put in a store, Macy’s could make available some more channels so that customers could change to a channel they prefer and feel happier at the store even if they do not buy anything.

A stressed customer will not be overall happy with their purchase at a particular store, and that unhappiness is going to be reflected in the long run in the form of fewer purchases at that particular store. Offering a relaxing environment with the least possible resistance to shopping both consciously and unconsciously helps a customer associate happiness with shopping at a certain store. A customer is more likely to be happy about making a purchase at a store if the items they are looking for and any related information is easy to find and the entire shopping experience is stress-free.