In a post-COVID retail environment, shoppers are often inundated with visual information. Alongside the numerous, and essential, safety guidelines are often brand displays seeking to encourage custom with an appeal that outshines competitors. While such information can be advantageous to customers and retailers alike, there is the potential for confusion and disorientation. To ensure that this doesn’t happen, while simultaneously keeping customers feeling orientated and enticed, retailers must carefully consider better retail design.
There are numerous ways in which retailers are able to keep their customers feeling comfortable with retail design and many of them passive too, which reduce the need for cluttered displays or staff scripts. To give you an idea of the designs that benefit both stores and customers, we’ve collected the designs that our clients consider to be the most advantageous to their customers’ comfort.
A Guiding Light
When it comes to shop lighting, there are no set rules. Many stores do generally benefit from well-lit interiors, especially when utilising natural light. However, as retailers such as Hollister, have demonstrated, sometimes a darker and more stylish atmosphere can be advantageous to certain aesthetic concepts. What remains overall important is that your lighting is considered and effectively utilised.
Focussed spotlights and well-lit shop shelving not only do well to showcase products but also help customers to navigate the store, guiding both their focus and their direction. Without needing to refer to arrows or signs, shoppers can be effortlessly encouraged to steer their interest in various, set directions.
High-Quality Signs
Displaying information as signs and posters is a method of communicating with customers, one that should echo the signature of your brand’s quality and aesthetic. Customers rely on such information being shared, whether about the latest product or health guidance and the information should be displayed with pride.
To ensure that such displays do not detract from your brand’s quality or overload your store aesthetic with information, we recommend carefully considered, high-quality shop fittings and fixings, those that allow for clearer, more effective signage about your store. You can take a look at our wide range of sign fixtures and fittings for further ideas.
Space To Move
Customer comfort is one of the desirable features in a store because it encourages customers to stay, browse, and potentially increase their spend. If they feel uncomfortable, whether because of their unavoidable close proximity to others or because of their disorientation, they will leave. Equipping your store with space is a great way to avoid such issues.
Interestingly, space takes many forms and it does not necessitate a greater distance between objects. In fact, for a customer, space could simply be an area within which to sit down. Clothing retailers have often found that shoppers benefit from having a comfortable respite, not only for their own comfort but because it also allows their family and friends to browse with greater patience. If no such space is available, shoppers are more likely to simply leave.
A Friendly Face
Connecting with your customers beyond displays is crucial for long term relationships. Creative branding and alluring displays have the ability to conjure great store appeal, bringing directing footfall into your shop. However, without a human connection, often one associated with charm and expertise, customers are less likely to return.