I am not a business adviser. I want to say that before anything else, because I know how it sounds when someone who has never run a stall in her life starts telling stallholders what to do. I haven't sold a single thing at a market. What I have done is walk past thousands of stalls, on cold Saturday mornings and warm ones, at car boots and craft fairs and the little Hastings market that sets up near the seafront. So this isn't expertise. It's just what I actually notice, from the other side of the table.
And the honest answer is that most of the decision happens before I've even looked at what you're selling.
The first three seconds are not about the stuff
I can be three stalls away and already know if I'm stopping. It's rarely the items that decide it. It's whether the stall looks like someone wants me there. A trader looking at their phone, arms folded, not making eye contact, tells me this is a chore for them today. I feel like I'd be interrupting something. So I walk on, even past things I might actually like.
Compare that to a stall where someone glances up, half smiles, maybe says something small like "morning, have a look" and then goes back to what they were doing. That's it. That's the whole trick. Nobody wants to be hard sold at half past nine on a Saturday, but everybody notices being ignored. A stall that feels open, even quietly, is a stall I'll actually browse.
The table matters too, though less than people think. I've stopped at stalls that were a total jumble, because the person behind it was warm. I've walked past beautifully laid out tables because nobody looked up. If I had to choose one thing to fix, it wouldn't be the display. It would be the greeting.
The pricing thing I can't let go of
I have a bit of a reputation among my friends for this one, so I'll just say it here too. If something is marked £5.99, I know it's £6. Everyone does. Rounding it down by a single penny doesn't make it feel cheaper, it just makes me wonder what else is being smoothed over. Mark it £6. Nothing looks hidden, and nothing about a clean number makes a stall look less friendly. If anything it makes it feel more straightforward, and straightforward is exactly what gets me picking something up rather than putting it straight back down.
The other pricing thing that sends me off is when nothing is priced at all. I understand not everyone wants to write a label for every single item, especially with a big table of mixed stock. But if I have to ask the price of three separate things before I've even decided if I like any of them, I will usually just decide the whole stall is too much effort. A rough price on most things, even a chalked range, keeps me looking instead of walking.
What actually sends me off, once I've already stopped
This is the part traders sometimes get backwards. Once I've stopped, the thing most likely to send me off again isn't silence, it's the opposite. Following me along the table telling me the story of every single item before I've asked is exhausting, and it makes me feel watched rather than welcomed. I like a story. I love finding out where something came from. But I want to ask for it, not have it delivered at me while I'm still deciding whether I'm even interested.
The other thing that sends me off is being talked out of leaving empty handed. If I put something down and say I'll think about it, that's usually true, and a bit of pressure at that exact moment turns a maybe into a definite no. I've gone back to stalls twenty minutes later and bought the thing I put down, more than once. Nobody rushed me into it. I just needed the loop of the market to bring me back round.
None of this is complicated, and that's rather the point
I don't think traders need a course in customer psychology. I think most of it comes down to looking up, pricing plainly, and letting people browse without narrating every second of it. It's the same as any conversation, really. Nobody likes being ignored and nobody likes being crowded, and the gap between those two is where most of the good stalls sit.
I get asked this kind of thing often enough now, from people I've chatted to on stalls themselves, that I put together a free guide with more of it, called What Makes Me Stop. It's just this, but longer, and written for anyone setting up a table who wants the honest view from the browsing side rather than a sales textbook. If that's useful, it's free on my site, no catch.