Product presentation is an essential part of the marketing and sales strategy in stores. These strategies vary from visual product displays to special promotions and pricing. The ultimate goal of product presentation is to attract customers into the store and encourage them to purchase products, as well as provide an enjoyable experience for customers and prompt them to visit the store again.
What is Product Presentation?
Product presentation is the practice of promoting and displaying products in your store intentionally. A significant part of this involves visually presenting products – the process of creating a display plan and designing product presentations to highlight their features and benefits. Colors, lighting, product placement, and store design play a crucial role in promoting products.
Product presentation also includes interactive elements, such as allowing store visitors to interact with the products, sampling products, taking photos, or sitting down to take a break.
Promotions and bundling are part of product presentation efforts – in addition to email marketing, social media, and any other digital marketing strategies you employ.
Why do Retailers Use E-Commerce?
1. Building Brand Recognition
When customers visit your store or look at your products online, they interact with shapes, colors, product arrangements, and many other visual elements. Therefore, all these elements play a role in how customers perceive and remember your brand. Your brand perception is often a result of more than people can consciously perceive. It’s mysterious and powerful.
For example, Apple is known for its simple and sleek store design with plenty of white space. This bright look and feel create a sense of luxury and focus. This bright look and feel is also reflected in its online store, which features very few colors, short lines, and ample space between different elements.
Another example is Lush, a brand of handmade natural cosmetics. If you’ve visited a Lush store before, you likely clearly remember its smell. You might even walk through a mall and smell a nearby Lush store, even if you haven’t seen one.
Once you enter, you can see hundreds of products without packaging that you can touch, smell, and sample. Lush is renowned for its colorful and fragrant store experience.
2. Increasing Sales
Product presentation emphasizes the best features and benefits of your products, leading to increased sales, as well as increased purchase size through promotions and cross-selling.
For example, you can promote a new hair care line by offering small samples. The customer may not need a new hair conditioner right now, but they may try it once their current conditioner runs out. They like it and choose to purchase it the next time they are in the store.
This way, they discover hair styling products and tools they were looking for, so they buy them and take samples of other products from the same line – and the cycle continues.
Encouraging promotion through samples, product placement, and bundling complementary products motivates the customer to not only purchase a larger product but also to return to the store again.
Excellent Customer Experience
The best thing you can do for your customers is to make them feel comfortable from the moment they enter the store until they leave (and beyond).
Their experience relies on more than just product presentation, including interactions with sales staff and payment options they can choose from.
But your products play a key role. Did the customer manage to find what they were looking for? Could they easily ensure they are purchasing the right product for their needs? Did the store design and signage make it easy to browse options? Will they tell a friend to visit your store to buy those products?
It aims to
displaying products to welcome customers with the best product at the right time. In turn, this will create loyal customers who return again and become ambassadors for your brand.
Improving Inventory Turnover
Carrying excess inventory costs a lot of money. However, carrying the right amount of products that your customers want improves cash flow, maximizes your storage space, and avoids unsellable inventory (products that can no longer be sold because they are out of season or not fashionable).
This is why product display is critical. Instead of passively carrying inventory and hoping customers will find their way to it, you can consider different seasons, customer needs, historical product demand, and upcoming trends to purposefully manage inventory and promote the right products at the right time.
Tips for Displaying Products
1. Consider Customers First
Your products should speak to your customers, from your product range to how each product is named, described, showcased, and marketed.
This is not just about the customer’s need for the product but also about their shopping style and how they make decisions.
For example, people go to IKEA to buy furniture and home supplies, but customer needs are not that simple. If they were, IKEA would just be a basic showroom displaying popular pieces of furniture with a checkout at the end.
Instead, IKEA allows its customers to plan and envision designs using its products. They can walk through model bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, hallways, and patios for inspiration to implement a solution in their own home.
IKEA takes this concept to another level with fully equipped and decorated apartment examples, often focusing on spaciousness and organization despite small space.
Consider what your customers need and want when they enter your store.
Improve Store Design
Your store design plays another important role. To enhance your store design, consider your products, the consumer behavior you want to encourage, and your store space.
Some store design options include:
- Grid: a pattern of long aisles, usually seen in grocery stores and pharmacies, with essential products at the back.
- Loop: a defined path customers follow, as seen in IKEA stores.
- Free Flow: no set pattern, suitable for smaller spaces and stores with more products.
- Boutique: a popular type of free-flow design that groups products by brand, category, or complementary products.
Check out all ten store design options to create a layout that helps you achieve your product display goals. Do you want to slow down and browse customers? Do you want to see complementary products together? Do you want to consider more versions of the same product?
Use a Variety of Display Types
Product displays can help draw customers’ attention to specific products and highlight relevant product features.
For example, you can display clothing on mannequins, clothing racks, and display tables. Small accessories like bags, jewelry, and fragrances look great on standalone displays, showcases, and embellishments.
The idea is to create an appealing and visually attractive mix of display types to set customers in the right mood and mental frame while browsing your store.
Pay attention to how customers move within the store and interact with different products and display methods, so you can understand what works and what doesn’t. You can adjust product displays and experiment with any of the 19 popular retail product displays for maximum results.
11 Ideas for Product Display and Visual Marketing
1. Turn Your Products into Art
Have you ever entered a store where the products are also the artwork? It’s bizarre and unforgettable. And while it may not always be practical, it can be a fresh way to showcase your products and highlight what makes them special.
I love
When there are artistic displays of products, it truly shows mastery of design principles. They resemble conceptual art or retailing with a twist. Chris Gilout, founder and retail consultant at Merchant Method
The distinctive art of fragrance makes passersby stop and take a closer look – and discover the perfumes beneath their noses. It’s art and product in one, a brilliant balance between taste and effectiveness in attracting customers.
“In the ability of [retailers] to create a piece of art, they also showcase that this piece is significant to the customer. It’s an artistic version of a spotlight, and I love that,” adds Gilout.
2. Create a complete physical experience
One of the quirkiest store and product designs is Victor Churchill, a retail butcher shop on High Street in Melbourne, Australia. Every aspect of the interiors, exclusive product selections, and stylish service makes it a unique and attention-grabbing store. Its dramatic lighting, dark colors, curves, and marble floors feel more like a luxury fashion label.
“We also love that the Melbourne store is a complete experience for the body. There isn’t a single screen in sight. Instead, guests breathe in the aromas, admire the displays, watch the presentations, taste samples, and converse with each other and team members. They engage, interact, and enjoy,” according to a report from The Cool Hunter.
Whatever products you sell, you can create an immersive experience that draws store visitors into your world.
3. Leverage technology
There are countless possibilities when it comes to technology – you just have to find the right method that works for you.
Big tech retailers like Apple and Verizon do this because technology is the essence of their products. But it can also work in favor of other industries.
Eslite bookstore uses digital screens to help customers find the location of a specific book in the store and view promotional video displays. Harvey Nichols, a British retail store, uses large touchscreen displays to showcase collaboration videos and product information. Customers can also add products to their shopping cart for checkout.
4. Harness the power of flowers
There is scientific evidence behind the benefits of fresh flowers – they have been shown to make people feel more at ease, relaxed, and grounded. What retailer wouldn’t want a comfortable, happy customer in their store?
Macy’s has recognized this for over 70 years with the annual Macy’s Flower Show. It’s a two-week exhibition that attracts around half a million people to participating stores.
There’s a good reason why we give flowers as gifts to the special people in our lives. Most retailers don’t put on grand artistic displays like this because they aren’t practical with the space and budget they have, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add flowers to your store.
Place fresh flowers outside your store to greet customers, sprinkle them throughout the store, and near checkout points. Look for clever ways to incorporate them with your product – perhaps using a large pitcher as a bouquet, or creating fresh flower garlands for human displays.
5. Use recycled product displays
You can choose a more unconventional way than traditional racks, shelves, and display cases to showcase your products.
Trina Turk Boutique did this using old records. Instead of displaying fashion clothing and accessories on standard product racks, it took a rustic and creative approach with trees.
This adds a different visual appeal and speaks to your brand identity when using out-of-the-box product displays. And if you recycle smartly, you might also save some serious space in your budget.
Records aren’t the only way to be creative. Look for something that suits your store: refurbished record players can be used in a music store, wind chimes or necklaces can be displayed on an old coat rack, or a cart could support flower seeds in a home and garden store.
6.
Use Real People Instead of Human Displays
Using real people in your store instead of human displays can be a powerful tactic for visual marketing – especially if you sell clothing and accessories.
Abercrombie & Fitch has mastered this. When the target demographic of teens passes by the store, they are drawn to this real-life embodiment of what they aspire to be.
I’m a huge supporter of this idea… to be this living embodiment of wearing the clothes, says Gillot. “This personal experience, whether it’s visual or not, is incredibly crucial. But I love it when it’s visual because you seamlessly weave it around the space.”
This is highly effective for these stores due to the style they sell and the strong brand image, with the models serving as concrete evidence that the Abercrombie & Fitch image can be achieved.
Customers will be eager to buy the clothes worn by those models so they can live that lifestyle too – not to mention the pictures they’ll share on social media.
And if your store is completely different from Abercrombie & Fitch, you can still find ways to use real people instead of human displays to showcase your products. Make your products a part of staff uniforms, host a fashion show, or hold live demonstrations where your employees show how to use the products in real life.
7. Guide Your Customers Through Your Store
If there’s a retailer that has mastered how to guide customers through the store, it’s IKEA. Its layouts in physical stores are arranged so well that they guide every step customers take.
This works very well because when you know how customers move through the space, you know where they are likely to look and what they are likely to see. Using this knowledge, IKEA can place promotional displays, new products, and other priorities at those high-traffic, visible points.
Essentially, IKEA can pinpoint where its customers spend most of their time. This is valuable for directing consumer behavior.
Gillot always recommends taking the customer’s sightline into account when designing or updating the store layout. “Customers scan and view the store at about a 45-degree angle from their walking path. So often when retailers or owners, or even employees, are setting or fixing product displays, they do it right in front of them, and directly, without regard for how customers wander around them,” she adds.
Gillot has advice to break this habit: “After setting product displays, or when you are showcasing products, walk around the space and scan the customer’s sightline to ensure they see and approach the product from that 45-degree angle.”
8. Use Your Customers
A long time ago, Gillot organized an event at The Carrot Flower Company, a local flower shop. “The owner had the windows open, and an outdoor seating area, and we were using that – not just the inside, but the front of the entire store too.”
Passersby see a group of people in the store – evidence that this is a place worth checking out. And while there weren’t any products part of this display, it was a visual promotion of your brand and the experience you offer.
Encourage your customers to spend time in your store, even if they aren’t shopping. Provide a comfortable space for customers to relax. Simple offerings like free water, tea, and coffee can go a long way.
9. Create Interaction
The word “interactive” has a technological feel, but you can use interactive visual marketing without technology.
IKEA Canada organized IKEA Play Café, a pop-up store in Toronto. This home goods store transformed that space in the city center into an area where guests could eat, play, and shop.
While
Almost everything in the store was interactive; one low-tech but popular game was a tic-tac-toe table made from food utensils.
10. Challenge the traditional idea of stores to better serve your customers
LIVELY, a lingerie brand, considers its spaces more than just a place to buy products. You’ll see customers chatting, sipping coffee, and taking pictures in front of beautiful walls.
Retail used to be about sales per square foot. Today, [shoppers] don’t need to come to the store to buy. They want to come to the store for human interaction. They need something to do that’s not on their screen anymore. Michelle Cordeiro Grant, founder and CEO of LIVELY, at the IGNITION: Redefining Retail event
Women strolling in the city need a place to stop and rest, and they know they can rely on LIVELY for that. Some even came in and breastfed their babies.
Create comfort for your customers during their visit without pushing them to buy. Grocery stores can provide a free in-store snack, while children’s stores can offer free use of a baby carrier for new moms.
11. Repurpose
Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, is a fantastic shopping and dining destination. The pedestrian mall stretches for several blocks and is lined with small shops, restaurants, and drinking spots.
One block away from the main mall is Liquid Salon, alongside its classic bikes adorned with flowerpots. You might wonder what the connection is between bikes and hair, and the ties are really limited. However, the impact it has is that it stands out among the crowds.
“When I walk down the boutique streets, I see really typical signage, like double-sided signs and signs painted on windows and awnings,” says Giluot. “People think this is the fastest way to attract customers.”
Get rid of the standard folded chalkboard and choose something more unique for your store’s front. Inspiration for signage can be found anywhere – check out Craigslist, yard sales, and thrift stores to see what gems you can discover.
Examples of Retail Store Displays
Looking for examples of retail store displays for inspiration for your own shop?
1. Forage Plants
Check out Forage Plants, an indoor plant store and community for plant lovers. Its stores feel like home, with comfortable chairs, apparel racks, sofas, and a bathtub – a great way to make the store feel like a room in customers’ homes, helping them imagine how the plants would look in their own settings.
2. Kowtow
Another strong example is Kowtow, a sustainable seed seller of fair trade certified organic cotton.
Kowtow stores differ significantly from what you would expect from a clothing vendor. Instead of full shelves and racks, you see bare walls and small piles of clothing, with some pieces hanging alone or in small groups.
This simple store design is something you see in an Apple store, but this clothing vendor gives it a different meaning. The store display aligns perfectly with Kowtow’s mission to save the planet through sustainability.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/retail/product-merchandising
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