Retail Design Tips to Help You Boost Sales

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People are visual beings. Simply put, the easiest way to grab someone’s attention is to show them something that carries a lot of visual interest. Be it something very ugly or extremely beautiful and stimulating people are bound to stop and stare (sometimes even literally).

That’s why retail design plays such a huge role in brick-and-mortar stores. From your merchandise staging to smartly displaying all that you have in your offer, we will share with you some neat tips and tricks that will help boost your sales in no time. Here’s how you can influence the buying decision without coming off as too pushy.

Set your layout

As a retailer, you want the people visiting your store to see your best or newest items first. That’s why you need to determine where you should pace them. Observe the behavior of your store visitors to try and determine where do they go first – left or right. Another neat trick is to influence them (on the subconscious level) by putting markings on the floor that almost pop (they work somewhat similar to road signs) and basically show them where they want to go.

Clear the decompression zone

The decompression zone is the area right at the entrance of your store. This area serves as a place where people entering your store take a minute to turn their buyer personas on and quickly assess everything in your store. Overcrowding this area with items or sale signs can have a negative effect as people usually tend to miss those items as they slowly adjust and venture deeper into your store. The best way to go is to place only a couple of staged items here (think of it as an extension of your window) and contrast the entrance of your store (lighting a color-wise) with the “outside world”.

Impulse buy items live on the checkout

Have you ever browsed a store and got all the items you needed only to see, for example, candy bars right at the checkout and thought to yourself “Oh, I really feel like eating a Snickers right now”, even though you’ve already got yourself a full-sized chocolate bar in your shopping cart? Those are called impulse buy items. These items should be useful yet inexpensive enough so that basically anyone finds them appealing. By smartly using your checkout space you could boost your annual sales by almost 7%.

Avoid downtime

Sooner or later, any retail shop will require some maintenance or repairs. Do know that, even though they are necessary, they can avert your customers or discourage them to enter your store. For example, imagine experiencing some serious issues with your store’s pipes. This would require you to close up shop for at least a couple of days until the issue has been solved. Luckily, today, there are fast and non-disruptive solutions like trenchless pipe relining that won’t hinder your business the slightest, as they are quick and simple. Therefore, it’s always advisable to run regular maintenance and take care of potential problems before they appear, to avoid downtime.

Don’t overstuff your store

Finally, when displaying your goods, avoid overcrowding the space. There’s probably nothing more frustrating than having to elbow and butt-brush with other shoppers when you want to approach an item for a closer look. Keep in mind that people like their personal space, so make sure there’s enough room to move around in your store. Furthermore, don’t put all of the pieces of all of the sizes of a single product out. This will only create an additional mess. Instead, display a single representative of the size of a single item at a time, and keep all the other ones in the back of the store. However, don’t forget to restock the racks as soon as certain sizes are sold out.

These were just some of the tips you can choose to try out if you want to boost your sales. The important thing to keep in mind is that you should avoid overwhelming your customers at any cost and do everything in your power to offer them a seamless shopping experience instead.

About the Author

Cooper Klein is an entrepreneur with a degree in Marketing. He’s interested in real estate and interior design. In order to spend more time with his family, Cooper decided to take a break, and he’s currently working from home as a blogger for Smooth Decorator and several other sites. You can find him on Twitter.

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Image source: elements.envato.com