Visual merchandising is a crucial aspect of providing a stimulating and enjoyable shopping experience for your customers as well as being an effective way to drive sales and define your brand. How you display your products and organise your shop is tantamount to shaping customer interaction impacting your business either positively or negatively.
Here are a few powerful techniques to get you started.
Colour Your World
Having a colour scheme helps to create a cohesive visual experience that both attracts customers to your space and tells them a story about your brand. The science of colour psychology has explored how colour influences people’s emotions and state of mind and sets a tone for what people can expect. Colour effects can be utilised in every aspect of your business not just for your customers but for your employees too as a way to sway the feel and mood of how people perceive your business. Selecting a colour palette that is harmonious with your brand and speaks to your goals is key in visual merchandising.
Think about MacDonald’s for a moment. The colour red is known to stimulate hunger and create a sense of urgency – fast food. People also associate the colour red with sales or cheaper prices. The use of a sunshiny shade of yellow works to encourage feelings of joy and laughter. This is a winning palette combination.
The colour blue forms associations with reliability, security, peace of mind and brand trust and hence why Microsoft Windows employed the use of the colour. These associated feelings to the colour are also often why shades of blue are used in offices and corporate spaces by companies who want to position themselves as reliable, secure and trustworthy.
Set the Ambiance with Lighting
Lighting is a great way to create an atmosphere that can sway the mood that you want your customers to feel in your store. Warm lighting will create a mellow and calm mood while cooler lighting maximises visibility and creates a more energised and sterile atmosphere.
It’s important to make sure that every area of your space is well lit as dark corners with low visibility are known to deter buyers. Use smart lighting techniques to highlight and draw attention to or away from certain products. Where you have newer products, shining a light on them so to speak will entice customers towards them. Conversely, you could use lower lighting techniques around older products to better direct your customers’ eyes to the products you really want them to notice.
Using lighting to create bright visual displays work especially well as a business façade to pack an exclusively visual punch as opposed to a shoppable display.
Direct Customers with Signage
Signage is a great way to share information, highlight products or features and guide your customers to specific items. It plays a significant role in how your customers understand your store. Exterior signs offer a great opportunity to advertise in-store deals as well as set the tone and intrigue before anyone sets their foot in your door. Lit window signs are especially effective if your store is located close to competitors. Always think of your exterior signage as a greeting for your business. Will it be inviting enough to beckon a passer-by?
When designing your signage, you firstly need to determine your signage goals and what you want them to accomplish. Are they for advertising deals? To give your store personality? To spotlight certain product features? Then decide how you want your signs to look in the way of shape, colour and font, being careful not to clutter them with non-essential information.
Signage should always either inform, persuade or promote in an easy to understand and concessive manner. It should also be clearly visible and create a call to action.
Call on Signkor to help guide and assist you in designing your business signage to bump up your visual merchandising to the next level. Visit their website www.signkor.co.za to find out more.
