Have you ever been to a grocery store and picked up and paid for a product that’s not on your grocery list? Chances are someone intended for that to happen — and it’s all part of the effects of merchandising a store. In this article, we’re going to give you the top five merchandising tips that successful companies and industry leaders swear by.
But before that, let’s explore what it means to merchandise.
What Does It Mean to “Merchandise” Your Store?
Merchandising often refers to the concept of visual merchandising, which means to systematically arrange, layout, and display products with the goal of encouraging buyers to pick them up and buy them, thus increasing sales.
But merchandising can be a bit tricky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And what looks “pretty” doesn’t necessarily move buyers to buy them. So how do you do it properly?
Five Top Merchandising Tips You Should Seriously Consider
When trying out visual merchandising, here are the top five tips you should consider:
1. Engage All the Senses
Although this article is all about visual merchandising, the first rule in merchandising is to engage all human senses as much as possible. Most buyers decide based on what they see but you can explore the possibilities of converting potential buyers beyond that category. You can entice them to make purchases with what they hear, what they smell, what they touch, and even what they taste.
- Visual (sight) – factors such as lighting, color, arrangements, and layouts can catch the attention of potential buyers. A product can stand out based on these factors alone. Visual elements can enhance how customers perceive brands and can make it easier for them to make a decision when choosing between brands. If your goal is to improve the sales of a particular product, make it visually appealing to customers by playing with light, color, and arrangements.
- Olfactory (smell) – a particular smell can influence a person’s feelings, what that person thinks, and how that person would process information. Indeed, the olfactory sense is the closest sense linked to memory. A study found out that by diffusing a simple ambient scent in a small store, shoppers bought more compared to when there was no aroma at all.
- Sound (hearing) – playing a piece of background music can encourage buyers to spend more. In fact, several studies found out that classical music makes customers pay more for the same products than when other musical styles or no music is played.
- Tactile (touch) – textures can greatly influence a consumer’s buying decision too. Here, it is recommended to place a target product within arm’s reach so customers can touch, feel, and explore the product. Research says that physically holding products can create a sense of psychological ownership, increasing the likelihood of consumers buying the products they touch.
- Gustatory (taste) – this is especially important when you’re selling food or drinks. Unsurprisingly, “taste” remains as consumers’ top preference when it comes to new foods and beverages.
2.Group Products Together to Ignite Customers’ Imagination
Product grouping, from the words themselves, means grouping products together according to a criteria that best meets the needs of your business. For example, you can group products together according to colors, use, type, size, theme, and etc.
You could also create combinations that spark customers’ imagination. For example, grouping a sunscreen product together with a surfboard, a summer attire, and a pair of sunglasses can encourage customers to imagine how their summer would look like by having these products, increasing the sales of these specific products.
3. Use Retail Signages
Using retail signages is the simplest and easiest way to convey information about what’s on sale, what’s hot, and other promotional activities the store is conducting. Signages can immediately catch the attention of consumers and they are effective in increasing the purchases of a particular product.
When creating signs, ensure that your message is short and direct to the point. Also, make the design consistent with the store’s brand identity and play around with the visuals to evoke desirable emotions that can trigger consumers’ purchase decisions.
4. Make Your Store “Instagrammable”
Making your store visually pleasing or, at least, interesting in pictures would surely improve the brand awareness and brand equity of your business. Here, you need to create an experience in-store that your customers wouldn’t forget. This includes creating “stories” that would automatically include your store visitors in.
You can also create signs with phrases, adjust the lighting to set the mood, place props for your visitors to play around with, or have some fun visuals on your walls that would serve as the perfect selfie backdrop for your store visitors.
Remember, the more interesting the “story” you deliver, the more likely your store visitors will pull up their phone and take a snapshot of your store. Word spreads like wildfire on social media and it wouldn’t take long for other customers to visit your store and be part of the trend.
5. Layout, layout, layout
In merchandising, creating the store layout is as important as choosing the store location itself. Store layouts can make or break your business. It can encourage visitors to explore your store and check out other products or it can deter them from visiting it completely.
When designing your store layout consider the following:
- Match your floor plan with your sales and marketing goals
- Plan the “flow” of traffic, where you lead your customers from the entrance to the exit
- Be careful with overwhelming customers with the numbers of your products. Display only products that matter
- Use negative spacing
- Arrange and rearrange to create a sense of novelty
Benefits of Merchandising
Overall, merchandising your store can lead to multiple benefits such as:
- Increasing the number of customers who notice and enter your store
- Increasing your overall sales, especially when retail signages are placed correctly
- Maximizes your store space, therefore increasing sales without necessarily increasing your store space
- Promote products that are hard to sell
