Retail Store Design: An Expert’s Guide to Store Design

Retail Store Design: An Expert Guide to Store Design

What is Customer Flow and Why Does it Matter in Store Design and Layout?

Before we dive into the different types of store layouts, it is important to understand what customer flow is and how it affects your sales.

Customer flow is the number of people and shopping patterns of shoppers that enter or pass through a retail store.

You can monitor customer flow in-store in several ways, including:

• Observing the number of people entering the store
• Analyzing purchase data
• Reviewing a time-lapse video, if you have a camera in the store

Understanding customer flow is important to identify flow patterns and areas in the store that are frequently visited or not visited at all, as well as the number of visitors and customer behavior in general.

Understanding customer flow will help you set up a merchandising plan or a business layout plan that works. By analyzing the areas where the store performs well and those that need improvement, you can determine whether the store design is helping you be profitable or causing you to lose sales. Once you successfully set up the right store layout, customers will flow the way you intended and your sales will increase.

If you discover through monitoring customer flow that many areas of the store have no shopping traffic and that inventory is not moving, you can reevaluate the entire store design or just the layout of that specific area to improve customer flow.

What Are the Types of Store Layouts and Designs?

The store layout should help you achieve your retail business goals by guiding customers through the store and exposing them to your products, by managing the key stimuli that encourage buying behaviors. How people interact with your store is a big part of your brand and should be crafted as carefully as the other aspects of your business.

There are many store layouts to consider. Here are 10 to get you started:

1. Grid Layout

In a grid layout, products are displayed on shelves in long aisles that customers wander through, allowing them to browse products while they roam. The grid layout maximizes product exposure and minimizes white space – almost all grocery and pharmacy stores use this familiar layout.

The grid is focused on product, product, product. A standard grid layout looks like this:

Impulse consumer goods are displayed at the end of aisles and staple products at the back. Aisle ends are prime real estate, and many stores utilize additional features like end-cap shelves to highlight products better. If you’ve ever wondered why milk is placed at the far end of the grocery store, it’s because this layout forces customers to pass by a range of products that might be purchased based on desire, whether on their way to the staple product they need or on their return.

If you have enough space, four-foot-wide aisles help prevent collisions among shoppers. While it’s not standard, it is something you should aim for, as 62.2% of consumers in North America say social distancing is one of the main factors that make them feel comfortable while shopping in-store.

Advantages:

• Best for stores with a lot of products, especially when the products vary
• Displays products prominently, as the layout encourages customers to browse multiple aisles
• Familiar to shoppers
• Predicted traffic flow means you can place promotions where you know customers will see them
• Many infrastructure suppliers, such as shelving, are available because this layout is widely used
• Has been

Advantages:

• More opportunity to expose customers to a wide variety of products.
• The planned route encourages customers to explore the store more thoroughly.

Disadvantages:

• Customers may feel forced to follow a certain path, which could lead to frustration.
• It may not be suitable for larger stores, where customers may want to navigate freely.

The loop layout is often seen in larger retail environments where the goal is to maximize the number of products customers see, potentially increasing impulse buys. This layout can also create a more engaging shopping experience as customers are guided along a curated pathway.

4. تخطيط المتجر بشكل مفتوح

يعتبر التخطيط المفتوح أسلوب تخطيط حر يشعر فيه العملاء بمزيد من الحرية لاستكشاف المتجر. يتم ترتيب المنتجات بطريقة تتيح للمتسوقين الانتقال بحرية، مما يجعله خيارًا جيدًا للمتاجر التي ترغب في تعزيز تجربة التسوق الخاصة بالعميل.

المزايا:

• شعور أكبر بالحرية لدى العملاء عند التسوق.
• يمكن تصميم المساحة لتسهيل التجربة الاجتماعية.

العيوب:

• قد يؤدي التخطيط المفتوح إلى شعور العملاء بالارتباك، خاصة في المساحات الكبيرة.
• يمكن أن يؤدي عدم وجود مسارات محددة إلى سرقة المنتجات.

يفضل هذا النوع من التخطيط في المتاجر التي تلبي احتياجات عرض خدمة العملاء وتجربة التسوق. كما يمكن دمجه مع عناصر ديكور جذابة لإضافة لمسة جمالية للمساحة.

the product

• Expected traffic patterns more; easier to place promotions and ensure they are well seen
• Can be a shopping experience – may work with retailers that make the journey reasonable and customers do not need to spend a short time in the store

Disadvantages:

• Customers cannot browse products freely
• May waste the time of customers who know what they came to buy; they may avoid this store in the future when they have a specific purchase intent
• Inappropriate for stores that encourage high traffic flow or carry products that people need to spend a short time thinking about before buying

IKEA takes the loop layout to the extreme, and if you have visited before, you may have experienced both the benefits and drawbacks of this design depending on your intention for visiting the store. If you are there to browse, the experience can be quite pleasant – it encourages browsing and creative displays spark ideas for your home. However, if you went there to buy a few specific items, it becomes an exhausting and frustrating place – it’s no coincidence that haunted houses also use the loop layout.

However, the loop layout can be non-frustrating as long as it is carefully chosen for the right purpose.

A well-thought-out application of the loop layout is those pop-up gift stores accompanying limited-time exhibitions that continue the story of the exhibition by making the store a natural extension of the display rather than a surprising and unexpected sales area.

A well-executed loop layout allows vendors to tell a story, despite very specific constraints.

4. Store Layout Without Flow

The philosophy of no-flow layout is almost a rejection of other designs. With no-flow layout, there is no deliberate attempt to force customers to follow expected traffic patterns: wandering is encouraged. Therefore, there are very few rules, but that doesn’t mean there are none – don’t forget the unwritten rules based on natural human behavior.

No-flow layout is considered the simplest store layout, as there is no specific pattern, but we must not forget that there are best practices – human preferences and behavior still matter and should be considered to make this layout successful for your store.

Advantages:

• Suitable for small spaces
• Also works within retail areas that use both the loop and spine layouts (we will talk about that later)
• Creates more space between products
• Less likelihood of customers colliding with each other
• Better for upscale stores with fewer products
• Most likely to create a shopping experience

Disadvantages:

• Often less space to display products
• Easy to forget that there are best practices to follow – human preferences and behavior still matter and should be considered to make this layout successful for your store
• Can be confusing for customers

No-flow layout can encourage product browsing and impulse buying. It is best suited for stores that focus more on creativity or upscale brands that want to give the retail experience a central part of what they do.

The downside is that due to the great diversity in no-flow stores, it is easy to do the wrong things that drive customers away. Very close placement of shelves, lack of adequate visual breaks, or placing the checkout point in the wrong part of the store can encourage leaving instead of buying.

5. Boutique Store Layout

Boutique store layout, also known as in-store layout or compartment layout, is a common type of no-flow store layout. Products are separated by brand or category, encouraging shoppers to interact with complementary items in designated areas. Walls, product displays, and amenities divide the areas and create a feeling of small shops within one store.

Advantages:

• Stimulates
• Curiosity among shoppers
• Highlights different brands and product categories
• Helps in co-promotion and cross-selling

Disadvantages:

• May reduce the overall display space for products
• Customers may not explore the entire store
• Customers may feel confused

If you are selling multiple brands, boutique store layout is a great way to use store design to tell a story about each brand. You can reduce the likelihood of customers not exploring the entire store by ensuring that each section is not too closed off. Instead, you can use shelves, tables, and racks to create alcoves that people can flow into easily.

Store Layout Design Tips

Humans are highly visual. In fact, 65% of people are visual learners, and half of the human brain is dedicated directly or indirectly to processing visual information. If you want to grab and hold shoppers’ attention, it’s important to create a visually appealing and stimulating store design.

Here are some key store layout design tips that will help you attract customers and encourage them to buy:

Design Based on Customer Flow

You want shoppers to see your best and most appealing products or product offers the moment they enter your store. For this reason, it’s important to know where people go or turn after they enter your store. Do they usually head to the right or the left? What do their eyes focus on first? These are some questions to consider when working on your store design.

In most cases, shoppers enter and typically head right and move counterclockwise. However, it’s also important to consider your location and common traffic flow. In fact, studies have shown that the flow of traffic within a store can be affected by road traffic patterns. Herb Sorensen, author of the book “Inside the Mind of the Shopper,” notes that “the shopping pattern in supermarkets is counterclockwise in the United States, but PathTracker studies in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan show a greater bias for shoppers to move clockwise there… Store traffic patterns may also be affected by vehicle traffic patterns outside. In these small studies, we noticed that in countries with right-hand driving, where traffic circles move clockwise, shoppers in stores may feel more comfortable moving in the same direction.”

Based on your store’s location, you can consider this information to arrange the store layout that embraces the most used direction in your area.

It’s also important that not all of your store design decisions are based solely on external research. Your observations will help you assess your specific customers’ traffic patterns.

Start with Your Window Display

Your window display is one of the first interactions the customer has with your store. It can also be one of the most important store displays to help
Source: https://www.shopify.com/retail/the-ultimate-guide-to-retail-store-layouts