How to Grow Your Retail Business: 13 Proven Ways (2025)

Retail business growth doesn’t just mean expanding retail locations or selling more products. It involves embracing technology to help you scale and meet changing customer expectations. 

Yet most retailers navigate a rite of passage when they’re growing their business. They’ve optimized every square inch of retail space, and despite success with their first store, are wary of the extra commitment that comes with expansion. 

Whether you’re just starting or have been in the game for a while, taking a fresh look at your growth tactics is always smart. Here we'll delve into 13 proven ways to amplify your success and grow your retail business.

1. Analyze your current retail business

Every successful retail business has a solid understanding of its customer base. Deeply understanding your customers goes beyond recognizing their buying habits; it means digging into their needs, preferences, and behaviors. 

Retail analytics help you understand the challenges your customers face and how your business can solve them. The goal? A clear snapshot of consumer behaviors, purchasing patterns, and market trends, so you can reverse engineer your retail strategy to capture and retain more high-value shoppers. 

Start by tapping into data from the following sources: 

• Point-of-sale system: Your retail POS provides plenty of data on sales, customers, and products to understand consumers better. 
• Foot traffic analysis: Customer traffic counters like Dor let you see how many people visit your store. Compare this to Shopify POS data to better understand why and when customers come to your physical store. 
• Ecommerce platforms: Discover the percentage of people who order online versus in-store. Supplement this with customer feedback surveys to pinpoint why customers choose either option. 
• Marketing analytics: Platforms like Shopify Email help you understand order rates, products purchased, and CTRs. 
• Customer service interactions: Apps like Grapevine and Fairing integrate with Shopify to compile customer feedback from multiple sales channels into one repository. Use the data to prioritize areas for improvement and identify successful strategies to double down on.

Shopify makes it easier to get a bird’s eye view on how your entire retail business is performing. As the only platform to natively build POS and ecommerce on the same platform, all customer, inventory, and order data flows back to the same reporting system. 

2. Improve the in-store experience

A thoughtfully designed store layout does more than just showcase products; it shapes the customer's journey, dictating the ease of browsing, the flow of foot traffic, and the likelihood of impulse purchases. 

Start observing how customers currently interact with your store layout. Monitor the customer flow, keeping an eye on how many customers come into the store, where they stop, how they behave and how much they buy. This can help you identify areas of the store that get the most attention and sales, and those that are avoided.

Other techniques to maximize square footage and improve the retail customer experience include:

• Hosting events or workshops 
• Handing out free samples or product demonstrations 
• Giving staff access to unified customer profiles

Home furnishings brand Parachute, for example, relies on unified customer profiles inside Shopify POS to personalize the retail experience. Every piece of first-party data it collects on customers—be that loyalty points they’ve earned, products they’ve bought online, or conversations they’ve had with sales associates previously—feeds back to this 360-customer view.

“That personal connection is really what we are and what we want our teams to focus on; we see a big impact from that,” says its retail operations manager, Juliette Grant. 

3. Optimize inventory management

Effective inventory management is essential to sales growth, serving as the bridge between supply and demand. 

When managed properly, inventory ensures product availability and reduces overhead costs associated with excess stock or emergency replenishments caused by a stockout. You can also save on storage costs and improve fulfillment, while contributing to your business’s cash flow.

To improve your inventory management, adopt best practices such as:

• Regular stock audits (including physical inventory, spot checking, and cycle counting)
• Leveraging inventory management systems for real-time tracking
• Maintaining a balanced safety stock and understanding par levels
• Understanding seasonal trends in your market
• Forecasting demand accurately 
• Keeping an organized stockroom
• Maintaining strong relationships with suppliers

⚡️Tip: Get a handle on your inventory with the free Stocky app for Shopify. Track inventory across multiple locations, raise purchase orders, and generate inventory reports without leaving the Shopify POS.

4. Move to a bigger location

More square footage gives you greater opportunities to sell. Not only can you showcase more products on the shop floor, but a bigger retail location lets you:

• Hold more inventory. Whether this gets sold to customers in-store or reserved for pickup in the stockroom, more products to sell equals more revenue potential. You can also cut down on inventory costs when you have space to store products bought in bulk. 
• Increase your maximum occupancy. This gives you the flexibility to host larger events or in-store activities. You can also employ more retail associates to welcome more shoppers during peak times. 
• Add extra amenities. Instead of reserving floor space for products, use the extra square footage to add amenities such as fitting rooms, seating areas, or interactive displays that improve the customer experience. 

5. Open another store

There will come a time when you’ve hit an upper ceiling in your current retail location. You’ve maximized every square foot and built a loyal customer base. Take what you’ve learned to open another store. 

Before expanding, you must assess whether there's a genuine need for more new stores. This involves understanding:

• Market saturation: Has your product or service reached a maximum level of consumption? Or is there still room for growth in the existing market? 
• Regional demand: Is there enough demand for your product or service in the geographical location? 
• The logistical implications of branching out: Can your business reasonably scale without hindering other areas of growth? 

If you’re feeling uneasy about opening a new retail store, opt for a location that can also be used for fulfillment. A spot with more storage can additionally be used for in-store pickup of online orders, local delivery, and in-person returns. 

Likewise, you could also consider a smaller location primarily as a showroom where customers can experience your products, then place orders online.

6. Launch a pop-up store

Another approach to reducing risk as you grow your retail presence is to test demand with pop-up shops. These temporary shops can gauge customer interest and sales potential without the commitment of a full-fledged store. 

For example, direct-to-consumer beauty brand Glossier tests out new retail stores with seasonal pop-up shops. Its London Covent Garden pop-up shop was so successful (100,000 customers came through the doors over two and a half months), the brand decided to open a permanent store there.

⚡Tip: Instead of investing in standalone POS hardware for pop-up stores, turn your smartphone into a credit card reader with Tap to Pay.

7. Expand your sales channels

Online selling presents a golden opportunity: US online sales hit more than $1.1 trillion in 2024. Yet, successfully integrating ecommerce into a traditional retail business requires a blend of strategy and adaptability. This means:

• Ensuring consistent branding across all touchpoints—including retail stores, ecommerce websites, social media storefronts, marketplace listings, etc. 
• Offering excellent customer service that mirrors in-store shopping.
• Allowing customers to switch between multiple channels during one purchase journey, like viewing inventory availability at your online store, placing orders online, and collecting them in-store. 

Unified commerce platforms help manage the backend operations of an omnichannel business. As the only vendor to natively build POS and ecommerce on the same solution, Shopify offers one business “brain” capable of syncing inventory, order, and customer data into one operating system, with none of the technical complexities or patchy middleware typically required to sell omnichannel.

According to recent research from a leading independent firm, retailers using Shopify POS’s unified commerce functionality experience:

• 22% better total cost of ownership
• Up to 8.9% uplift in gross merchandise value 
• 0.4% lower downtime costs compared to competitors 

8. Add a new product line

Greater choice gives customers more reason to visit your store. The more products they buy, the more revenue you’ll generate.

Think about how to better meet customer needs and preferences with multiple options. Sometimes it isn’t about developing a new product from scratch but reworking a current offering to meet shoppers’ needs and provide more value. For example, instead of selling just red shirts, you might offer blue shirts in the same style, or expand your sizing options.

Some other product ideas include: 

• Create a new product line to complement an existing one: Start offering quirky pens to go with the quirky notebook you sell.
• Create a new product in the same vertical: Sell casual and formal shoes to reach a new target market. 
• Expand to a new vertical: Start renting out your store space as an event venue when the shop is closed in the evenings.

⚡Tip:Shopify Analytics unifies product analytics from every sales channel so you can identify areas for expansion. If you learn that in-store customers are more likely to buy journals, for example, test a new variation before you make it available to purchase online. This level of exclusivity is often enough to get your first few sales of a new product.

9. Offer new services

Services have higher profit margins than physical products. Aside from the obvious investment in employees to deliver the service (and any training required), you’ll net the majority of profit when upselling a service to existing shoppers. 

Examples of services you could offer include:

• Product repairs or maintenance 
• Personal shopping services 
• Alterations or tailoring 
• Technical support or setup services 
• Gift wrapping 

Specialty bike store Offbeat Bikes, for example, offers bike servicing and repairs from its Chicago store. It uses Shopify POS to manage these orders and unify sales data into one reporting dashboard. 

“On top of handling our product sales and managing inventory, Shopify POS is really the workhorse of our service center,” says owner Mandalyn Renicker. “We offer customers ongoing service and repairs, so that was really important. We create draft orders as custom orders through Shopify POS to invoice these customers and keep our records organized.”

10. Launch a loyalty program

Customer loyalty programs encourage repeat business, fostering a cycle where customers feel valued and are incentivized to continue purchasing. 

For example, menswear brand Mizzen+Main has an omnichannel loyalty program that gives shoppers one point (or company “coin” as they’re known) for every $1 spent with the brand. It offers a variety of features to appeal to different customers, including birthday gifts, free shipping, and early access to sales and products, no matter where the customer places their order.

To assist with retail growth on other channels, Mizzen+Main also incentivizes customers with bonus points when they:

• Create an account on its online store (500 points) 
• Subscribe to its email list or SMS marketing (25 points)
• Follow the brand on social media (25 points)

⚡Tip: Launch an omnichannel loyalty program with apps like Smile and Marsello. Both integrate with Shopify so you can reward and redeem loyalty points wherever a customer shops with you, online or offline. 

11. Experiment with pricing strategies

Instead of trying to acquire new customers or investing money into product development, assess whether the price you’re selling each product for has hit its ceiling. 

Price sensitivity describes how much price changes influence a customer’s buying behavior. Products with high price sensitivity mean shoppers are very responsive to price changes. Just a few dollars increase can lead to a significant drop in sales. Those with low price sensitivity, however, means customers will still buy them even if the price increases. 

Consult retail pricing analytics to analyze the price sensitivity for your inventory. You might find that increasing a luxury product’s retail price by 3% has no significant effect on sales—in that case, you’ve grown retail sales without doing anything new. 

12. Test new retail marketing strategies

Don’t rely on customers to visit your store on their own accord. Retail marketing reaches potential shoppers on the channels they’re using and influences them to visit your store or purchase online. 

Popular channels to experiment with retail campaigns include:

• Social media: Conduct a store survey to find out which platforms your customers are most active on, then produce content that meets them there. This could be photos of your store, new product launches, or reposted videos created by happy customers. 
• Email marketing: Use Shopify to segment your audience based on first-party data unified in their customer profiles. Then, send personalized campaigns with Shopify Email to encourage a purchase. For example, you might create a segment of customers who’ve bought a lunchbox from your Chicago store and offer a “back-to-school” promotion to drive them back. 
• Local advertising: From billboards to Google Ads campaigns, reach people in your local area with sponsored content. You could even score free advertising by joining local directories, attending networking events, or hosting an event. 

13. Leverage automation

When exploring retail growth opportunities, most brands face two limiting factors: time and money. Automation helps you maximize both of these resources, so you can expand without proportionally increasing budget or time investment, like hiring new employees to fulfill orders when the process can be automated, for example. 

Other use cases of automated retail technology include:

• RFID technology to track the location of your inventory and update quantities inside your integrated inventory system.
• Automatically raising purchase orders with vendors when safety stock levels fall below a predetermined threshold in Stocky.
• Serving online customers with an AI-powered chatbot, such as Shopify Inbox.
• Electronic shelf labels to adjust pricing dynamically based on demand, without having store associates analyze pricing data and rewrite labels by hand. 
• Automated picking systems that use robots to retrieve products from your stockroom for fulfillment.

Electric bike retailer Weebot, for example, relies on Shopify to automate its post-purchase emails. The series educates customers on how to take care of their e-bikes. Should they need a repair, they can schedule one at their nearby store—all without intervention from its retail team. 

The result: a 15% increase in retail revenue driven by upselling and cross-selling spare parts. It’s also reduced order processing times by 50%, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and speedier checkout.

⚡Tip: Choose from hundreds of automation templates or create your own custom workflows with the Shopify Flow app. It integrates with both native Shopify features and app integrations to define triggers and actions across your entire retail toolstack.

Grow your retail business with Shopify

Growing a retail business is not an overnight job—at least if you approach growth sustainably. 

Start by thoroughly analyzing your business’s current state and customer expectations. Combine this with a long-term strategy of embracing tech and adapting to evolving consumer behaviors. 

Shopify has everything you need to grow your retail business. From multi-store location management to a single backend that unifies both processes and data, you’ll never outgrow nor need to switch POS providers again.