If you own a retail store, then the manner in which you display your merchandise will be of great importance to your sales. Some stores are laid out carefully in ways which make it easier for any customer to shop, while others can lead to extreme frustration.
Research has confirmed that clients are more likely to be attracted by sight than by any other sense. Meaning each item in your store must be highly identifiable and visible at a glance. One of the most innovative aspects of operating a pop-up shop is the management of visual merchandising elements of a retail environment.
So, everything from a window display the potential customer first sees, to the signage which directs them around, and the merchandising displays which catch their eye, all eventually can influence their buying decisions.
This is where we get into the heart of visual merchandising: displays themselves. Now, we will be highlighting three general principles to keep in mind when developing merchandising displays for your pop-up shop.
Grouping similar products provides your customers more reasons to purchase more items from your store. It also has additional useful reasoning behind it - it saves them significant time from looking around and attempting to mix and match things.
You can think of it as establishing categories, but you shouldn’t limit your creativity there. You can also develop “groupings” within the categories. That means having merchandise which might be the same type, size, price, or color together.
As a merchant, it’s hard not to tell that before customers buy something, they usually want the idea of what it’ll feel and look like. There are numerous ways to accommodate this crucial need, and most of them revolve around how you set up the display of your merchandise.
Establishing a display which allows clients identify with the product and letting them envision it in their home or on themselves, allows you to assist them in getting one more step close to making the purchase.
For instance, the sales floor in kitchenware stores has their merchandise displayed in a way it might look in a certain kitchen. The furniture stores are set up with the displays which make it easy for customers to envision how similar products could be set up in their own homes, and so on.
Another great way apparel retailers do this is by developing policies which require their sales staff to wear the clothing they are selling. And of course, the most popular and good example of this would be a mannequin, who you could easily style based on your latest style and releases.
In creating effective displays, many visual merchandisers usually defer to the rule of three. The rule proposes that when developing a display, it is a brilliant idea to try and work in sets of three. For instance, if you were arranging clothes on display hooks you would do so based on their height, you would have items that were tall, medium, and short.
It's something you can easily observe for yourself. Our eyes are more likely to keep moving and looking around when we are looking at something asymmetrical, as you might have discovered. When we see some balanced or symmetrical items, our eyes seem to stop dead in their tracks.
Hopefully, by now, you have a strong understanding of several fundamentals of the visual merchandising and already have brilliant ideas for how you can begin applying what you learned to create your own pop-up shop.
Don't be afraid to try out and always trust your instinct with some of your innovative decision-making, provided that you get into the mindset and the habit of experimenting with something new, testing and measuring it, and using feedback to adjust as required.