Visual merchandising is the art of ensuring customers see all of your offer, are inspired, feel connected to your brand and ultimately make a purchase.  What simple things can you action in your shop to drive sales?

1. Know the importance of your shop front

Windows are your free billboard to the world, you have a few seconds to make customers stop in their tracks and step off the pavement into your store.  Ensure they are impactful, show a clear message and don’t under estimate the power of humour and fun.  

The look and feel of a window display should be carried throughout the store and product displayed in the window needs be merchandised at the front of the store. 

Windows should be refreshed regularly not just with product but the look and feel, create a window calendar to help with planning and budgeting. 

2. Inspire, engage and excite

Give customers a reason to shop in a physical space, an experience, not just a transactional interaction.

Curate inspired product stories, and display product from across categories to create unexpected co-ordinated stories, think about colour, texture and end use, encouraging customers to buy into a total look.

Have fun with displays, be brave and creative inject some theatre and interaction into the retail environment, demonstrate to customers how product could fit into their home, lifestyle or wardrobe.

3. Create an ideal customer journey

Customers need subtle clues to ensure they travel through the whole space, see all the product on offer, and finally make a transaction easily. 

Obviously there needs to be space between fixtures for ease of navigation but also create focal points within the store environment to draw customers further in. 

These focal points could be a product story, a display, graphic or colour block, anything that catches the eye people are naturally drawn to, think about the cubic space, not just the floor and walls, can you hang displays, lighting or product in certain areas to fill this area and draw the eye in?

Finally, making a purchase should be simple and quick for customers, cash desks need to be easy to see and find and queues minimised.  This part of the customer journey is critical, from a VM perspective cash desks should be uncluttered and easy for customers to carry out the transaction.  An important opportunity for the sales team to interact with customers, gather important data and develop brand loyalty.

These three visual merchandising principles are important factors to consider when laying out, planning and merchandising a store. Implemented correctly they will ensure that product stores and the retail experience is maximised when customers enter the retail space.

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