The key to retail success lies in maximising sales. Businesses have spent decades refining displays and services to better ensure that customers spend a greater amount of money and return more frequently to do so. When looking to achieve these goals, retailers will often focus on their merchandise and prices, making themselves more competitive, as well as improving their customer relations so as to better prompt customer loyalty. These considerations are ultimately very effective but can pale in comparison to the benefits of effective retail design.
The arrangement and style of a brick and mortar store are likely to be practical. Products must have their space to be displayed, customers able to browse, and staff to manage the shop space. However, it is very easy to see beyond the foundations of a stores operation, which is why a number of retailers fail to encourage sales with their store design, neglecting the impact it can have upon an individual shopper.
Arrange In Chapters
The story of your customer experience begins at the door. Many retailers have found success in the decompression zone, an introductory space that allowed shoppers to adjust to the indoor space before beginning to explore. From this moment, however, it is hugely beneficial for stores to begin writing a story of their shopping experience, leading customers through complementary chapters of products and displays.
This design should replace on the nose displays of supplementary purchases typically crowded around a checkout counter and, instead, lead complementary products to appear in a customer’s view one after the other, as if chapters in a story.
Sell Your Lifestyle
When customers are choosing products and brands from among the great variety of options, they look not only for the quality of a product but of the associated lifestyle. GoPro, for example, managed to dominate their market by emphasising the activities and adventure that their camera equipment could be used for, not solely the quality of their technology.
When in-store, this can be done with both key displays, such as those that emphasise a brand’s culture, as well as the luxurious retail furniture and shelving, such as slatwall and mannequins, all of which support the quality of a product by association.
Reason To Rest
The longer a person spends in-store, the greater the likelihood that they will increase their spend. The caveat of this point is that customers must enjoy their time in a shop space. This can be best achieved by allowing shoppers to relax within the store, hence why many stores are now looking to join their space with cafe culture, encouraging customers to seek a respite during their shopping experience, a development whose popularity is often attributed to bookshops.
Make A Statement
Modern psychological studies have demonstrated that customers are more likely to associate themselves with brands that make statements. Previously, it has been supposed that retail spaces should be neutral, seeking to meet the needs of all customers who enter. However, asserting brand statements through design, while deterring some customers, actually increases the spending and loyalty of customers that remain.
