Each day this week I am sharing a newsagency management benchmark which I hope you find useful. The benchmarks are not rigid, use them as a guide. I have developed these and other benchmarks over years of working with a variety of newsagency businesses in many different situations.

Management benchmark #5: basket size/depth

By basket I mean the items purchased in a single transaction.  By size I mean total purchase value.  By depth I mean the number of items in a basket.

These benchmark measures will vary by type of newsagency. For example, in a shopping mall business basket size will be deeper. In a newsagency selling lotteries and including this in their basket calculations, the depth will be higher. The key is to measure yours, which your newsagency software should do without effort for you and to make it a goal to improve on this regularly.

The two measures I include here are overall averages for the channel as we are collectively performing at the moment. For ease of comparison, the numbers do not include lottery product sales.

• Basket size: $9.94
• Basket depth: 1.63 items

You can increase basket size and depth by offering impulse purchase opportunities at high traffic locations and not just at the counter, through out of store offers to drive traffic, with over the counter offers and through some loyalty programs – to list just some of the options.

The reality is, with the changes impacting retail generally and our channel in particular, our benchmark aspirations for the two measures noted above need to be 20% ahead of these numbers. Achieve this and you are in a better position to weather the changes playing around us.

I hope this series helps newsagents look at their businesses differently and to ask questions about their performance in the context of best practice in our channel. Newsagencies with the brightest future are those where data is respected and benchmarks are set to be achieved and passed.

Each day this week I am sharing a newsagency management benchmark which I hope you find useful. The benchmarks are not rigid, use them as a guide. I have developed them over years of working with a variety of newsagencies in many different situations.

Management benchmark #3: revenue per square metre

This is a tough benchmark to write about as it differs based on your location and your personal rent situation. For each of consideration I have come up with a range of situations and my suggested revenue per square metre per year benchmark.

But first I need to explain the measurement. In calculating revenue per square metre, revenue is all product sales only as this is a pure retail calculation. As for space, I am only interested in your retail space – not your back room and not from the top of your counter back to the wall.

Here are my suggested situational breakdowns:

1. City shopping centre: $8,500.00.
2. City high street: $5,500.00.
3. Regional/rural shopping centre: $6,750.00
4. Regional/rural high street: $4,500.00

These figures could be very different in your situation because of rent and other local factors. Use them as a broad guide only. The most important takeaway I’d like you to have from this post is to measure your number from last year, compare it to today – see how you are travelling. If you’re up, good. If you are down – fix it.

I hope this series helps newsagents look at their businesses differently and to ask questions about their performance in the context of best practice in our channel. Newsagencies with the brightest future are those where data is respected and benchmarks are set to be achieved and passed.