Drafting a store layout design is concluded as both art and science with the requirement of psychological insights, creativity, and testing.
Staking in this post, we’ll traverse through the 10 pointers that can be applied while planning a layout of the store. Just stroll them with a naked eye and try applying them in your store layout design.
- The Right Floor Plan
It’s critical to manage the in-store foot traffic, where the floor plan comes into action by tearing the curtains just like an entry of a superhero. The choice of the floor plan may depend on many factors like – store dimensions, the product range, and the front face – the Target Audience.
How do your customers look like? What’s their shop behavior- Are they in hurry or do they stroll and buy? Do they need guidance while cruising the store or do they help themselves out? And, most importantly – DO YOU WANT TO FIND THAT?
These questions are like the voices from the inner soul and they need to be answered. Some types of floor plans are rolled down below –
- The Straight
It involves positioning shelves or racks in straight lines to make the store more organized. This is the most economic layout used in large retail spaces, supermarkets, etc. to display their merchandise.
- The Loop
This type of layout makes your customer traverse in a loop. The fixtures and the merchandise are placed in a way that creates a path for the shoppers.
- The Angular
It resonates with a sophisticated vibe through curves and angles.
- The Geometrical
On geometrics, the fixtures and racks are placed to create a unique feel. Go trendy with it.
- The Freeflow
It offers maximum creativity by not limiting the floor plan, merely, to certain angles. Allowing customers to move in any direction, provides stroll freedom to them.
- The Lead Way
It is important to know – Where you should lead your shoppers in a store?
Clockwise or Anti-Clockwise? As the majority of the shoppers tend to move in the right direction and they explore the store in a clockwise manner.
For an instance, in both UK and Australia the stroll behavior depend on their daily movements – In both countries, people drive on the left side so they move in a clockwise manner wherein US, people choose the anti-way.
- The Ensure
It should be clear-cut about how much merchandise you have to showcase to the customers. Keeping so much to display can degrade the brand perception leading to a decline in brand equity.
- The Enough Space
Avoid the butt-rush effect, though packing the merchandise on shelves IS OK till you’re providing the space to the customer. Don’t LOAD-AND-LOAD-AND-LOAD…..
- Use The Store Layout
To drive impulse sales with the right merchandising placing on the radars of the customer. Marts, Grocery Stores are very good at it – as their checkout space to impulse sales from the customer’s retina (like putting gift cards, candies, etc.).
Co-branding also encourages impulse sales and the apparel stores utilize this method to drive more and more doe’s in.
6. The Fresh-Fresh
Regular freshening-up of displays makes your customers experience the new arrivals. Decking up the arrivals makes the product range fashionably-in, also it can make your brand rule the fashion tables.
The Expert-Talk: Regulate your displays or some parts of the store, once a week. The obvious reason is the new product range coming in!
If the store is in the busy lanes with the likes of the New York Window Shoppers, you definitely, need to change your displays in the most enticing ways to grab customer’s eyeballs and pockets.
- Appeal Multiple Senses
The majority of the store layout is made up of visual elements – but if you can touch customer’s different senses, you can make the right experiential impact on the literal drive of purchase decisions. Immerse these factors to inculcate the sense talk we are discussing. Here are a few ideas on what you can do:
- Sound
Wisely choose your playlist, according to the atmosphere and the ambiance you want to create. Volumes play a major thing – they can either please the mood or destroy the mood while shopping. Demographics also play their role in choosing the playlist. If the footfall primarily consists of the younger shoppers, play what they listen to daily, in a similar way you can differentiate between the gender-music-choice to the adults-and-aged ones.
- Scent
Bakeries and cafes are at a distinct advantage as they can drive their customer from merely the aroma of their products. But if you’re not a bakery or a cafe, you can still make your store smell nice to give a premium experience. Using aromatic gift cards, brochures can act as the catalyst in creating that experience.
Just like the sound, the right scent will depend on your audience structure and the business nature. Do research, figure it out, and deploy it with a pout.
- Touch
First-hand experience is all that matters, nowadays. The feel, the hand-rub vibe is what entices the customer to use it before buying. Most of the industries display their sample products to the customers to test ’em.
- Taste
The taste-testing stations are the best to make this sense activated if you are dealing in food stores. This can again encourage the shopper’s experience. This type of appeal mostly works out in food businesses.
- Co-Branding
Grouping merchandise into categories and departments is a well-used strategy to enhance sales. Different brands with the same purposes allow the user to buy more identifiable products on a single display. But make sure that the customer’s perspective is the most sought factor while co-merchandising.
- The Staff-Placement
Positioning of the staff in a store holds the same importance as the product placement in a store design. A Retail Design Agency can make an effective strategy to deploy the placements. The sales floor can camouflage into a warzone, with employees switching their roles as the sales soldiers to invite, engage, retain, and retain more and more customers.
Mke them moving in the store to form a pseudo image of customers strolling, so the store doesn’t look empty with the flies and bees around.
- The Effort-Meter
The last thing you have to do is to measure the efforts you’re putting into driving the customers with the above crux pointers. The floor plan, placements (Product/Staff), arrangement decisions – all contribute to them while curation and implementation of the strategies. Just keep a thing in mind – YOU ARE YOUR BEST CRITIC! Take words from everyone and everywhere but make the final call on your vice and inner decisive satisfaction.
FROM THE BOTTOM
The bottom always concludes – that a store layout design and the right placement strategies have a proportionate effect on your sales and in-store footfall. Investing time and energy in making the strategies work is the best deployment of source and resource, not renewable and non-renewable though. So, keep the trend up with yet another smile for your next customer to score the game run.