8 Retail Visual Merchandising Tips to Drive Sales
Though e-commerce is skyrocketing, brick-and-mortar retail shops still gain a certain position among consumers. The right implementation of visual merchandising (VM) strategy is probably contributable to the store’s success.
Eye-catching store display could affect buying decision of customers
Goods showcases are a critical part of every retailer. Consumers are conventionally interested in goods nicely displayed in the store. Not only do the visual cues provide consumers with essential details about the goods, but they are also motivated to shop in them.
That’s why the deployment of proper visual merchandising strategy is crucial to drive sales. You might wonder, how to build a proper visual merchandising strategy? Or are there any merchandising tips for you?
To make everything much easier for you, we have compiled a list of retail merchandising tips for retail stores. Are you tempted to know? Let's get the ball rolling.
Why Customers Still Prefer In-store Shopping to Online
The question is, “Why do customers still prefer shopping in-store to online?”
According to Forrester’s estimation, 72% of retail sales in the US is expected to occur in-store for the next few years rather than online.
The reason why customers prefer in-store shopping to online as some want to test and try products (47%) while some want to walk away with the product instantly upon check-out (38%).
8 Retail Visual Merchandising Tips to Drive Sales
Below are top 8 retail merchandising tips and tricks for a chain store.
#1. Consider Human Senses
You might not know this, but to deliver a good customer experience, it is not just about papering their sight. Instead, to successfully persuade customers to buy goods is attributable to many sense-related elements.
It is best to make customers be comfortable right when coming into the store. That’s why the store managers better consider other senses like gustatory, tactile, auditory and olfactory to entice customers to buy products. The successful incorporation of these human senses can make the customer’s shopping experience holistic.
#2. Psychographics Research For Target Audience
The concept of demographics and psychographics might be too strange for marketers today. The demographic data classifies people by elements like gender, race, and age, providing the understanding of cognitive factors to drive customer behaviors.
This comprises motivations and emotional responses, political, moral, and ethical values; prejudices, inherent attitudes, and biases.
The collection and analysis of these data allows insightful psychographic profiles of target customers, used to generate relevant messages for customer segments.
Demographics vs psychographics
On the other hand, psychographic profiles include data about people’s hobbies, lifestyle choices, interests, emotional triggers, to name a few. These detailed data can offer insights into why customers intend to purchase a certain product, vote a specific way, support given causes, etc.
In detail, psychographics research includes the following information: personality, hobbies and interests, attitudes, personal values, and lifestyles.
#3. Introduce Design Theories
The head of retail stores can conduct visual merchandising strategies based on design theories. One of the best approaches is to use the contrast to place products in shelves and decorate the stores.
The right placement can make the goods pop out and attract the attention instantly. That said, the composition should be balanced to ensure no areas look too crowded. For example, one of the merchandising tips for clothing is to utilize a clear clothing design theory so that the customers could get the message via the clothing display, leading to the actions of visiting the stores and buying the clothes.
#4. Utilize The Theme
Each retail store boasts its theme, which comes with the goods available for sales or with the general store concept. Utilizing a theme is a good way as it makes the chain store look consistent, bringing the same vibe to customers coming to the chain store.
Implete the same them across the chain store
#5. Regular Merchandising Changes
Another great tip for visual merchandising is to change the store display design regularly. By changing the visual merchandising items when launching new products or promotion campaigns, customers can quickly notice the presence of new goods and promotions.
#6. Providing Guide Throughout The Chain Store
That you cannot find things in stores is frustrating. That’s why it is essential to provide guides through the entire chain store. These guides might be about store and product arrangements. Still, you can create clear signs to help your customers to navigate thanks to the display.
#7. Being Creative And Vivid
You might be surprised when knowing strong visuals can make your store display look better and livelier. This vividness might come from the patterns, colors, and shapes of products. If the product look doesn’t stand out, you can add props for better gaining customer attraction.
#8. Implement Premium Shelf Space
It is, sometimes, not enough to just get yourself into retail locations. Even when you are doing ok, your products could excel if they were better displayed.
A University of Chicago’s study shows that moving juices bottles vertically from the worst to the best placement on the shelves practically prompted an increase by 79% in sales.
According to another study from Repsly, the replacement of products from the bottom shelves to the eye-level increases the sales by up to 87%.
(Repsly)
If you want to seek visual merchandising ideas for retail stores, learn more here.
Monitor Visual Merchandising Deployment in Different Stores
To gain the best implement of visual merchandising strategies, it is advisable to track the performance of displaying products and stores in multiple stores. The chain store can create checklists for auditors to monitor the work of stores.
It might be tough to control the visual merchandising in multiple stores. It is even more difficult if each store in the network does not use the same tool for goods showcases.
That can lead to inconsistent display among the stores you manage. Furthermore, this inconsistency can make the brand look unprofessional.
Embracing the need of a one-stop application to manage visual merchandising, FieldCheck integrates with essential features to monitor visual merchandising strategies.
FieldCheck helps monitor the visual merchandising deployment at multiple stores
On top of that, there is a feature namely digital checklist to particularly highlight the reporting in real time. Our solution is built for the frontline forces in mind to help them deploy tasks conveniently in an only application and communicate with the higher-level personnel better.
FieldCheck solution, not theoretically, provides:
- The ability to monitor all stores quickly about new visual merchandising items being deployed.
- The prompt and timely reports whenever there are any incidents arising.
- The quick detection of showcase-strategy-related mistakes by frontline store teams.
Easily track the implementation of display strategies
It is undeniable that visual merchandising performance directly affects the buying decision of customers. It is surely tough for the management to monitor the visual merchandising deployment in different stores. In that case, it is better to give a software like FieldCheck a go.
Wrapping Up
That's all about our tips for visual merchandising to drive sales for chain stores. In a nutshell, key things you could do include:
- Consider human senses in merchandising
- Do psychographics research for target audience
- Introduce design theories
- Utilize the theme across the chain store
- Change visual merchandising plan regularly
- Provide guides throughout the chain store
- Be creative and vivid in design
- Implement premium shelf space
And in an attempt to drive sales, it is best to closely track the deployment of display plans throughout the stores, which is quite tough for the management. In that case, the introduction of a tech-backed solution might be a good choice.
These supportive apps like FieldCheck could significantly help the merchandisers or managers to monitor the performance of stores in terms of VM deployment without any hassle.
Interested? Please schedule a FREE demo here for true experience.
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