How Effective Retail Design Can Help Boost Sales

Retail Design Is Changing

Retail has been around for ages but there are endless ways to designing your retail space. Would you believe us if we told you that spending the time and money in planning the design of your retail space will boost sales? Here’s why. Retail design helps narrate a brand, creates a story around products, and provides educational elements to consumers on products being sold. This ultimately leads to portraying your products to be more desirable leading to a sales transaction.

First Impressions Are Based On The Design Of The Store’s Entrance

First impressions indeed do matter, even more so in retail design. Companies already invest crazy hours into refining their products. What they sometimes fail to see is that their next focus should shift to where their products are being sold and how they can tell their brand story to customers walking through their doors. Take Aesop for example. The concept for their stores is dependent on the community, culture, and history of where the stores are. This design by Aesop can be found in Singapore - Westgate shopping mall with a concept that reconciles a forested mangrove swamp to an industrial precinct.

This is where a business’s next investment should be - it’s retail store design.

Since first impressions matter - it is what sticks the most with customers. Therefore, what is essential is for stores to have a concept that is strong starting at the very entrance of the store. One look should be all it takes for customers to grasp the store’s concept. The entrance sets the tone for the rest of the store. Think of creative window displays that highlight your star product of the month.

Think door sizes - big or small, wood or metal. All the different sizes and materials convey different messages to customers. A big grand door screams luxury whilst a store with no doors and an open concept screams openness for customers to walk into.

Product Displays Help Customers Decide On Their Purchase

As customers walk through the door, you get to decide what they see next. This is in planning out the customer store experience which is an important aspect of retail design. Typically, customers tend to circle the store starting on the right. So what we expect to see would be product displays also known as visual merchandising. Visual merchandising is proven to increase sales therefore the planning of space here is extremely important.?

Visual merchandising enables customers to experience your products “in action”. We are all about our senses when purchasing items. Those senses touch our emotions and there are studies that show, positive emotions toward a brand have a great influence on customer loyalty which is essentially what a business aims for. Think of a makeup product trial corner, a dressed mannequin, or a perfume store with all their perfume range tester made available.

Product displays also provide customers with an interactive element that provides opportunities for user-generated content. Anything aesthetically pleasing or you might call it insta-worthy encourages customers to share their experience at your store on their social media. You’ve got free extended market reach right there just by designing your retail space the right way.

Should you hire a professional to help design your retail space?

The easy answer is yes. But why?

Who better to help you plan this out than a professional interior designer who understands design through theory and experience? If you do not know how to execute a flawless floor plan on your own - you definitely should be leaving this to the professionals.

A professional designer walks you through the journey you’d want your customers to feel as they walk through your store. With that - they are then able to provide an estimate of the cost of building one, and the estimated completion date and ensure that your project is seen from start to end.?

What you need to worry about is only communicating the vision you have in mind and the professionals would be the ones to come up with a proposal (that works) for your customers. This settles all the potential design mistakes that you may make in trying to organise everything on your own.?

Bearing in mind, every designer would have their own unique style and area of expertise. It is your job to find out which designer style suits you the most (be it working style / design style).

At AR-kee Design Studio - we work with you to realise your retail design dream. We understand design executions the way you may not and that’s how great retail designs are created.

Chat with us today to find out more.?