5 Retail Design Tips to Boost your Business

We all know just how competitive the retail industry is now, what with the emergence of e-commerce, this is a tough time for the traditional retailer, and to hold your customers, your store design needs to be just right. Here are a few tips to help you make some positive changes to your store layout.

1. Don’t Put Merchandise Near the Doors – The area where a store visitor first enters is known as the ‘decompression zone’ and this is when the shopper adjusts to the new ambience, so avoid placing any of your merchandise here. A few metres of space before your shelves begin is the ideal scenario, as this gives the visitor the time to adjust to a new environment, and try to keep the store light and airy, which gives the visitor a good feeling.
2. Make Good Use of Stickers – The great thing about the sticky label (known as สติ๊กเกอร์ติดสินค้า in Thai) is its versatility; they can be used for calls to action (CTA) or to make a location clear, and with a few ‘BUY NOW’ stickers in the right places, you are encouraging the store visitor to take action. Stickers can be created to cover an entire wall and they can be a critical element to a successful retail ambience that makes the visitor feel good. You can tell your cashiers to slip a couple of small stickers in every bag when a purchase is made, which is a great way to get your name around.
3. Encourage Shoppers to Take Photos – The days of “photos prohibited” are long gone, and rather than worry about someone stealing your layout ideas, you should be focusing on encouraging shoppers to take selfies and share them with their friends. If you have signage that bans taking photos in your store, you should remove them and try to create an ambience where people feel like taking a selfie, which is an indirect way to publicise your business.
4. Keep your Impulse Buy Items Near the Checkout – Every retail store has a few inexpensive products that people pick up on impulse and they should always be prominently displayed near your checkouts. If you have the time, observe some of your CCTV footage at the tills and see if you can see customers reaching for these items, and you might be pleasantly surprised at how often this works.
5. Get Professional Help with Signage – Both your exterior and interior signage are critical elements of the overall ambience, and by searching online for a local signage firm, they would be happy to visit your store and give you a professional opinion on your signage, while offering suggestions on how to improve things. Informational signage should be uniform in colour, and hanging from the ceiling is the ideal location, as the signs can be seen from every location.

All of the above are effective ways to improve the layout of your store, and by talking to a local sticker company, you can create some new backdrops and a few CTAs to enhance the shopping experience for your customers.