One of the reasons that shoppers still love brick and mortar stores compared to online buying is the ability to engage with your merchandise as they make their choices. The more you appeal to their senses, the more excited they will be to shop in your store. The most important sense for retailers is visual, so how you arrange merchandise on your store fixtures directly impacts sales.

Strategic visual merchandising not only adds to your advantage over e-commerce sites, it can boost your store’s desirability compared to storefront competitors. Plan your store to be interesting, welcoming and convenient.

Top-selling displays start with the right store fixtures and layout.

These create the pathways that will lead shoppers into and around your store. Custom design ensures the fixtures you choose will not only fit perfectly, but also reinforce your store’s visual brand and marketing. Pay particular attention to the location and design of your cash wrap, because it offers unique branding and sales opportunities, especially for impulse purchases.

Use these tips to create sales-worthy displays:

1. Use signage to make it easy for customers to locate “departments” within the store as well as key spaces such as dressing rooms and restrooms.
2. Appeal to your customer’s emotions by featuring items they want. They already know what they need, but you want them to buy more, or at least spend more. So show off upgraded items, add-ons, and accessories.
3. Highlight what’s new – near the front so returning customers and those peeking in your door can’t miss the latest and greatest. (Window displays can also promote what’s new, or you can think of them as “art projects” designed strictly to draw the eye and pique interest – hey, I wonder what’s inside?)
4. Use the rule of three. Grouping items in threes or stacks of merchandise as short-medium-tall is more eye-appealing, and the variation leads your shopper’s eye from one item to another. Visual even-ness (numbers or heights) causes the eye to stop short.
5. Display related items together – furniture groupings, apparel outfits, complementary foods – for suggestive selling and shopper convenience.
6. Use mannequins, videos and posters to help customers visualize themselves using and enjoying your products.
7. Make sure displays of hot sellers have enough merchandise so you don’t have to restock so often, but also make sure you reorder in a timely manner. Running-out of merchandise not only loses sales, it upsets customers.
8. Freshen up. Move displays around to different parts of the store, rotating older items back, creating an enticing new look for slow sellers or pairing them with hot items. And pick a new decorative theme each month or so. If your clientele shops frequently, change more often.
9. If it’s compatible with your merchandise, incorporate the senses of sound, smell or taste, with music or fragrant items or a small plate of cookies or food samples.

Choosing the right store fixtures and using these tips to arrange your merchandise will help you create top-selling displays, no matter what you sell.

Palmer Retail Solutions strives to offer our clients the absolute best combination of innovation, quality, service, and value for our diversified custom store fixtures and merchandising displays. For more information about our designs, store fixtures, cash wraps, kiosks, or point of purchase displays, visit our website at: http://www.palmerretailsolutions.com.