Did you know that the visual appeal of your store contributes up to 80% of shoppers overall impression of your retail brand? In fact, each and every customer leaves a store with a mental image of how appealing the aesthetics of your store were. Stores should have an inviting appearance that makes customers feel comfortable, yet eager to buy.
To achieve this, there needs to be the right combination of both visual aesthetics as well as data-driven layouts.
With this in mind, here are a few merchandising tips that when worked into your planograms, will drastically improve the aesthetic appeal of your stores:
1. Shelf Spacing Tips
- Include a minimum space between a product’s highest point and the underside of the shelf above (two fingers). The gap should be kept the same throughout each drop. This will ensure that shoppers can easily pick products from your shelves.
- Place heavier and larger items at the bottom for easy access and convenience.
- Pack the smallest products on the left and the biggest on the right. This merchandising principle will help customers compare the different sizes and prices.
- Place all product heights on the top shelves to be consistent throughout the shelves.
- Use colour breaks to enhance the appearance of the layout.
2. Placement & Positioning Tips
- Merchandise products by category, sub-category, segment or product role.
- Merchandise by price point from premium to economy (left to right).
- This way of merchandising is more appealing to price-sensitive customers as well as value-driven customers.
- Use block merchandising wherever possible. This includes vertical, horizontal or colour blocking of products.
- Place best-selling products and profit generators at eye level. Products placed at eye level will generally contribute up to 80% of sales.
- Ensure your house brand is optimally placed. Usually, the house brand is placed between the brand leader and the secondary brand. This will help to improve the perception and value of the house brand, and help to achieve higher gross profits. Another flow option is placing the premium brand first, then house brand, brand leader and secondary brand.
3. Product space allocations
- Allocate space based on performance. For example, using the days of supply formula will help to ensure more space is attributed to products with higher movement. You will also want to make sure that products with a high sales contribution % and profit are well represented on shelves.
- Place product facings at the front of the shelf to make shelves look consistent and full. Shoppers will automatically be more enticed to buy a product if the shelf is packed.
- Mix high volume and high-value sub-categories to create hot spots around the store or in an aisle.
- Finally, attribute a minimum of 2 facings to new branded products. Data can then be collected and analysed to adjust the allocated space according to the sell through.
Conclusion
If you want to leave your shoppers with a lasting and positive impression of your store, then you will need to implement a healthy mix of data-driven product layouts and well thought out merchandising principals.
