One struggle that many pet supply stores often find themselves having is correctly engaging shoppers with the small animal category. With small animal being a seemingly insignificant part of the overall pet industry, it becomes almost too easy for retailers to brush it aside, or do away with it altogether. Many don't realize how easy it can actually be to implement a program for high engagement with your shoppers. 

As you will find in this whitepaper, the small animal business isn't as small as the animals for which the products are made. While only 13% of U.S. households own an exotic pet, half of all of these owners also own another pet such as a cat or dog. This means that multi-pet households need a place that engages them not only in the dog and cat category, but also in the exotic and small pet categories. 

Fortunately, implementing a program in your pet store that gets your customers excited about small animal is easy to accomplish. Here are some ways you can engage shoppers with the small animal category and encourage them to happily purchase the little furries and the products that go with them at your store.

Train your Employees to Engage with Customers In Store

While we understand that this is often much easier said than done, it is a crucial step toward engaging your shoppers in the small animal category. Training your pet store employees starts at the confidence level. According to a recent article, some ways to improve your employee confidence in your pet store are as follows:

• Let them try the products at home. By allowing your employee to take the food home and use it with their pets, they will be allowed the opportunity to see, smell, feel, and even taste the quality of the food.
• Create a focus month with specific themes. This is your opportunity to be creative and run some fun events and promotions that will keep both your employees and your customers fully engaged with your store.
• Educate, educate, educate. Take advantage of your manufacturer or distributor sales reps by requesting supplemental information that your employees can refer to in-store at any time.
  • You can also use programs such as Pet Store Pro to ensure your employees have a basic underlying knowledge of various tricks of the pet store trade

You may also want to consider what type of learner each of your employee is. By tailoring your education strategies to their individual (or collective, if there's a common theme) learning styles, you'll find that they will generally respond much better. 

Related Article: The Frustration Behind Small Animal Merchandising

Hint: Once you find out the best way for your employees to learn, tell your rep so they can tailor any training materials and sessions to their specific style of learning.

Start a Conversation with Consumers

Once your employees are trained, confident, and engaged, it should be easier for them to startin conversations with consumers about various topics in the realm of small animals. One way they can start a conversation is by engaging shoppers with information about small animal welfare in the modern world. 

Although welfare standards are improving, many rabbits still don't get access to sufficient hay each day, opportunities for outdoor exercise, or company. In fact, 57% of rabbits still live alone. This presents a variety of opportunities for discussion with your staff including:

• High-fiber foods and how they benefit a rabbits' diet (Hint: Supreme's Science Selective Diet provides 25% fiber)
• Adequately sized rabbit hutches and runs (Hint: Did you know Advantek is working on improving their humane industry standards for chicken coops and rabbit hutches?)
• Various types of toys for enrichment and outdoor play
• High quality small animal bedding that limits dust and provides the animal with enrichment and warmth (Hint: FiberCore LLC has completed extensive research into their in-store bedding program) 
• Selling small animals in pairs versus as a single. However, it's crucial to make sure the customer is ready to take on a pair of animals, as they do require more care, but benefits the animal's welfare in the long-run
  • Note: This idea only works with same-sex or neutered guinea pigs and rabbits. Do not encourage customers to mix together some breeds of hamsters in pairs, as it may end up in fighting. 

In other words, good welfare is good business. There's clearly a need for guided recommendations that champion quality care and who better to communicate those than a trusted expert retailer? 

Bonus: Download the Rabbit Revolution toolkit and receive a batch of high-quality eye-catching posters highlighting welfare issues that will help you get talking to shoppers.

Improve Shopping Speed for Fatter Baskets

You'll want to focus on creating an engaging small animal category with some clear signage to help shoppers understand what products they need. Research shows shoppers find the section confusing, especially the multi-pet owners that represent your most profitable customers. By creating a well-laid out one-stop shop, the average basket size will get bigger and shoppers will stay longer to browse other categories.

Make it easy for your customers to compare like with like by using Good, Better, Best principles left to right across the shelf. Use the most eye catching recognizable brands as 'doors' that create an entry point to the rest of the brand range and display linked products like same-brand hay and treats to create windows (either vertically or horizontally) radiating out from these doorway products. 

These are just some strategies you can use to engage with your shoppers and improve your customer's shopping speed within store, and especially within the small animal aisle. According to a recent article, the confusion behind small animal merchandising  comes from the small animal section in many stores not being very well planned. Therefore, this causes consumer confusion and frustration. When consumers become frustrated, they no longer feel in the mood for shopping, and are more likely to leave the store empty-handed.

Needless to say, this is bad for both the retailer and the consumer, as the former loses out on a sale (and potentially many future sales), and the latter loses out on finding the supplies they need for their pets. It's crucial to ensure an easy-to-shop small animal section and pet store as a whole. 

To find out more about merchandising your small animal category, download the whitepaper below and reach out to our team of experts who will be more than happy to help strategize one-on-one to come up with the best method to fit your store.