Retail designs have a long history, and there are countless ways to approach designing your retail space. However, there are also some common design strategies that every retailer should know to attract more sales.
What is Retail Design?
Interior retail design is how you organize and design your retail space. Retail design is responsible for welcoming customers and guiding them through your store.
What are the Six Basic Store Layout Patterns?
Most retail brands tend to lean towards one of the following six basic store layout patterns: Forced-path, Grid, Free-flow, Angular, Loop, Diagonal.
Retail Design Tips
The following retail design tips will help you attract customers, provide a convenient shopping experience, and facilitate purchases. Use Colors Wisely
When I say “Target red” or “Home Depot orange” or “Starbucks green,” you know exactly what I mean, right? Consumers connect with colors more than they consciously realize, as over 50% of first impressions that take seven seconds are based on color.
When it comes to colors, you can realize that bright colors can create a positive and vibrant shopping experience, but too many colors can be overwhelming and cause customers to leave the store early. Sensory overload can make it difficult for customers to focus on your products and concentrate enough to make a purchase. Customers are also less likely to return to your store if they didn’t like the aesthetics.
To avoid this, carefully integrate colors into your retail design. Look at color psychology. For example, black, which is a popular color for men’s clothing stores, conveys authority and elegance. Red grabs attention and encourages impulse buying. In contrast, blue conveys calmness, security, and trust, which is why many banks use the color blue.
Regularly Update Product Displays
It has been shown that product displays, also known as visual merchandising, increase sales. Customers can examine your products “in action,” such as a hanging plant, a styled living room, or a clothing mannequin, which can help them make a purchasing decision.
Displays also provide interactive shopping experiences (we’ll dive into that later) and offer easy opportunities to create user-generated content – aesthetically pleasing displays encourage sharing photos of your store on social media.
Make Confident Business Decisions
Use Shopify analytics and reports to make the right business decisions across your store locations. Discover seasonal trends, see which products need promoting, measure the impact of promotions on product sales, and more.
Threshold Area
The threshold area, also known as the “decompression zone,” is the first space customers enter when they walk into your store. It typically consists of the first five to fifteen feet of space, depending on the overall size of the store.
It is also the space where customers transition from the outside world and experience what you have to offer. At this point, shoppers also make critical decisions about how cheap or expensive your store feels and how well the lighting, fixtures, displays, and colors harmonize.
Since they are in a transitional state, customers are more likely to miss any product, sign, or cart you place in your store’s threshold.
Turning Right
The next time you enter a retail store, pay attention to the first movement you make – chances are you’ll head to the right. Most shoppers do.
After entering and typically turning right, the first wall customers see is what’s known as the “power wall,” which plays a significant role in the first impression that influences your products. Pay extra attention to this space in your store in terms of what you choose to display and how you display it.
Placement
Customer Path
Use furniture, displays, shelves, and other tools to create a clear path for your customers to walk through your store. The exact path will vary significantly depending on the size of your store, its layout, and the product plan.
However, you know that most customers will naturally tend to go to the right. Your job is to ensure that while they do that, they continue to wander through your store to see more of your products.
Interactive Shopping Experience
Interactive retail experiences (like this one) keep customers in your store longer. Visual merchandising – such as an arranged seating area – is a simple example of providing interactive shopping experiences, but most interactive merchandising leverages digital technology to engage with customers.
If you’ve recently browsed a sports store, you may have seen interactive experiences that allow you to try out bikes, golf clubs, and other equipment. Some retailers, including Bloomingdale’s, have embraced the trend of interactive merchandising, using iPad technology to provide engaging experiences in the fitting room.
Some retailers provide touch screens to enable customers to search for product information, discover complementary products, or build custom color palettes (in the case of PPG, as you can see below).
Regularly Update Product Displays
It has been shown that product displays, also known as visual merchandising, increase sales. Customers can check out your products “in action,” like a hanging plant, an arranged living room, or a clothing mannequin, which can help them make a purchase decision.
Displays also provide interactive shopping experiences (which we will cover later) and offer easy opportunities to create user-generated content – as aesthetic displays encourage sharing photos of your store on social media.
Make Customers Comfortable
You may already be aware of what is known as the “butt brush effect,” a term that refers to most customers, especially women, avoiding browsing aisles where they might brush against another customer’s backside or have their backside touched. This applies even if the customer is very interested in the particular product.
You can easily avoid this issue by ensuring that your aisles and displays allow customers enough personal space while browsing your products.
Local Community Items
When shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, one of my favorite displays to look for is locally curated selections. Whether I’m shopping in my hometown or on vacation, I appreciate when retailers gather items that are special to the local community or sourced from it.
Consider incorporating items from your community into your retail design. This not only helps showcase unique items that can fetch high profits but also helps customers feel a sense of belonging to the community – whether they are from it or not.
Simple Approach to Merchandising
When it comes to retail, less is often more. I mentioned above how too many colors can deter customers from making a purchase. The same can be said for merchandising and displays.
One or two strong-impact displays can draw your customers in better, even if you aren’t merchandising all your products (another reason to update displays regularly).
Natural Light
Many studies have shown that natural lighting positively affects buyer behavior in retail stores. Natural light not only highlights the color of your store but also improves the buyer’s mood and creates a more comfortable shopping environment without the heat of artificial lighting, which can also increase the productivity and happiness of your retail employees. (And, hey, natural light can help save on your electricity bill!)
Explore how natural light can impact your retail design. If you have windows in your store, take advantage of them and remove any displays or shelves that block the light. Position the checkout area near the entrance of your store so customers feel the natural light as they move toward the checkout. As a backup, you should have a plan for cloudy weather and shopping at night.
Spaces
Smaller Physical
The frequency of decision-making is real, especially for retail shoppers. They truly appreciate a smaller inventory space to shop from, which means that providing a smaller physical space may be more suitable for your retail design.
However, you need to be aware of your inventory management system. Smaller physical spaces require a larger back stock and more frequent restocking of products as shoppers purchase your items. Make sure your team is capable of managing restocking more frequently.
Alternatively, you can also offer “infinite aisles,” where customers can shop in-store and have products shipped directly to their homes. This option allows you to provide more purchasing opportunities without having to display everything physically.
Examples of Creative Retail Interior Design
Below, I’ve gathered three examples of my favorite retail interior designs – two of which I have browsed as a customer. The Sill
The Sill started as an online plant delivery company and recently opened physical stores – one of which is just steps away from my residence in Chicago. Although I don’t consider myself a plant expert, I enjoy visiting The Sill because the store is designed to make me feel capable of keeping a plant alive. (I’m sure that was intentional.)
While I can’t speak for the New York locations, the Chicago branch is bright and cozy, everything I want in my plant-filled apartment. The Sill is designed to guide both beginners and experts along its nursery-like aisles.
The additional shelving, signage, and décor enhance the experience. Whether you purchase a plant or not, The Sill’s retail design ensures you’ll at least leave with a photo.
Outdoor Voices
Outdoor Voices is a popular activewear brand and a Shopify client (and one of my favorite places to shop for workout clothes). OV is a great example of some of the notable tactics I discussed in this article: creating interesting displays of user-generated content, leaving enough space for browsing, focusing on the local community, and using colors to attract and direct customers in your store.
The fitting room / locker room shown in the image above serves as a space for content creation and gives a vague yet notable nod to the theme and OV store in Chicago: old high school gym classes. Furthermore, the furniture can be moved aside when Outdoor Voices hosts events and classes in the store.
Wildling
Wildling, another Shopify client, is a shoe brand based in Germany. The company, which started as an e-commerce business, decided to launch exhibits to bring in more new business and showcase the physical benefits of its shoes.
Wildling took a simple approach to its retail interior design, highlighting the shoes and leaving enough space for browsing and trying on products. This is important, as it allows customers to try on shoes and order them directly to their homes.
Conclusion
Your retail design is an ongoing process. With design trends constantly changing, you can always alter, adjust, and add or remove elements to create a customer journey and experience that resonates and has a positive impact. But at the end of the day, that’s exactly what you want to focus on: the customer journey.
Take a tour of your retail store to see where your retail design is directing you. Ask your staff and friends or family to do the same and provide honest feedback. Don’t forget to observe your customers and see what attracts them, what they avoid, and how they follow the intended path. Watch how they interact with your new designs, product displays, impactful walls, and signage.
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The end, these practices will help you create a segmentation design that is profitable for you and your clients.
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