Visual merchandising strategies: make the Customer the real star of your store.
How to build a winning point of sale?
It is sufficient if it is neat, properly lit and has a good product presentation.
Let’s see how and why.
Reading time: 4 minutes
There is no business without show business, someone used to say.
The era when the product was at the center of visual merchandising strategies is dead: today the retailer must put the customer, not the product, at the center of every activity and goal.
In marketing, this type of strategy is called the customer experience or customer lived experience.
We live immersed in an overabundance of products and services that are all the same.
As marketing guru Philip Kotler says.
We live in a Customer economy where the Customer is king. This is the result of overcapacity in production. It is Customers, not goods, that are in short supply.
Businesses must shift their focus from product creation to Customer retention.
Products come and go. The challenge of the enterprise is to retain Customers longer than it retains products.
All companies have the same opportunity, at least potentially, to access the same software, use the same distribution channels and advertising media.
If you decide to open an e-commerce, rest assured that your competitor, with the help of a web master, will have opened an online store within a week.
Therefore, it becomes important to draw the customer’s attention, through visual merchandising techniques and add a value proposition to the product to make it more enticing.
But if products and services are all the same, how do companies make sure their products are visible and attractive to customers?
The “x” ingredient, in this case, is precisely theentertaiment, that “E-factor” that takes the form of enjoyable and fun experiences.
Visual merchandising strategies: what are they?
Today, visual communication plays a very important role in the broad sales journey.
From the attractiveness of the storefront, to the correct interior layout of the store and the proper display of the product.
Visual merchandising is the art of combining aesthetics, psychology and marketing in order to enhance the point of sale and engage the consumer on an emotional and sensory level.
Engagement is achieved through a synesthesia of sensory channels: colors, smells, sounds, images.
The goal of visual merchandising is not sales per se, but to showcase the product (or brand) and bring it to life.
It aims to manifest its identity through the emotional and sensory involvement of the consumer.
The display then becomes an element of suggestion, persuasion and communication of the brand image.
And here visual merchandising brings the shopping experience to the forefront, making it something that springs from impulse and not from planning or scheduling.
The customer entering the store must feel like an integral part of the brand, and his or her discovery of the collections and assortments inside must become a well-rounded experience.
Visual merchandising that focuses on experiences enables the customer to have an authentic “emotional” experience, centers its attention on:
- Context of use and consumption, rather than on products;
- Experience types, rather than on product attributes;
- Integration of the stimuli that customers receive at all points where some form of contact with the company is manifested.
Visual merchandising strategies: a matter of technique
According to the “Total Retail 2017” report created by PwC,
“the store still remains the most popular channel, with as many as 51 percent of Italian consumers visiting it at least once a week to make their purchases.”
Making the most of every inch of the store becomes the golden rule for implementing the shop experience while building strong and compelling brand communication.
But how to do it?
Here are some secrets “stolen” from the biggest visual merchandising retailers.
Layout
A good layout starts on paper, where construction specifications, customer traffic flow, product placement and more are worked out.
Planning allows you to explore options and create a layout that combines aesthetics and strategy.
Every storefront, display, layout should tell a story.
To manage a good sales layout organization you will need to focus on two types of layouts:
Equipment layout
It concerns the overall layout of the store.
The choice and arrangement of display equipment and the consequent organization of customer traffic flow.
Equipment layout is divided into:
- “grid layout,” which involves long rows of shelves with straight paths and aisles;
- “island or free-flow layout,” also called boutique layout, which involves arranging equipment asymmetrically.
Merchandise layout
That is, the manner and display organization of products and sales space aimed at stimulating purchase.
The layout model chosen should facilitate the buying process and establish the image of the point of sale.
The light
Light is one of the basic techniques of visual merchandising.
Playing with lights is a great way to capture the customer’s attention.
You can have fun creating a truly atmospheric atmosphere with the main lighting techniques: primary, accent and ambient.
The first relates to the general lighting of the store; the second puts emphasis only on certain areas or aisles; and the third to the creation of the atmosphere within the store.
Display
Displays are the bread and butter for a visual merchandiser.
Designing displays for your store is like creating content.
If you write a marketing blog post full of jargon and clichés, it will not succeed with the audience.
Similarly, if you arrange a window display chock-full of stuff, cluttered and meaningless, you will not convince any customers to enter your store.
Think about how Tiffany shows just a few items in the showcase, communicating that they are special.
You don’t have to be a creative expert to create effective displays.
The art of display lies in creating visual impact through simplicity.
Try a single color theme to attract attention and communicate your store’s image.
Try to avoid clutter because in retail, space equals luxury.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of the typical customer you want to win over.
Think about your ideal shopping experience.
What do you expect when you enter a store?
Your expectations will probably not be very different from those of your clients.
Point-of-Sale Consistency and Communication Strategy
A final extremely important element is the consistency of the point of sale with the Marketing and Communication strategy.
This may sound like an obvious statement, but it is definitely not.
When an entrepreneur, or a shopkeeper, contacts me because they want to entrust the communication strategy (advertising some say) to my Agency, before the meeting I study the online positioning.
The website, social channels, reviews etc.
The first meeting always takes place at the headquarters of the company or business.
Well, many times what I find onsite (in the venue) is totally different from what I find online.
Most of the time, what I find in the store looks decidedly “worse” than what I see online.
This is a huge problem as we risk disregarding the expectations generated in the customer.
These entrepreneurs did well. They entrusted the website to a very good Web Agency.
She made an incredibly clean, polished and centered site in the communication style.
She chose the right font and colors. The photos are incredibly beautiful.
But their company, store, business is not like that.
You know when our friends tell us about a wonderful girl, create a lot of expectations, and when we meet her, the world falls in our lap?
That’s it. This is what we risk generating in our possible customer if the image conveyed is totally different from reality.
A little like the pictures we find on the packages of snacks.
Jam all over the place. We try to eat one and not a trace of the jam.
The watchword remains the same.
Respect for the customer.
To make this passage even clearer, I close this article with another quote from the great David MacKenzie Ogilvy
The consumer is not an imbecile, he is your wife.
Did you find this article interesting? You can explore further by reading these articles.