What are the key elements of visual merchandising?

People are naturally drawn to beautiful things, so keeping your store tidy, organised, and aesthetically pleasing should be a priority for any business owner. Your visual merchandising can help attract more customers and draw them into your store, encouraging them to buy things they might have walked past otherwise. Get your aesthetics right, and your profits will soar.

Don’t deter your customers!

Equally, a store that is messy, disorganised, and unpleasant to look at will deter customers that may have come to your shop specifically to buy something you are selling. You could literally be turning people away. So, what is visual merchandising and how can you leverage it to best sell your products?

What is visual merchandising?

When considering the visual merchandising meaning, you need to consider absolutely everything that your customer sees in relation to your brand. It is a marketing tool that incorporates the most obvious things like your products, your displays, your uniform, and your carrier bags, as well as more subtle elements, like your walls, lighting, floor plans, and signage.

Everything your business touches can be leveraged to enhance your merchandising and make your customers think favourably of your brand.

The importance of visual merchandising

It is about more than making your store look nice. Visual merchandising is essential to the success of your store. The best visual merchandising displays will help draw more customers into your store, while also boosting brand awareness, and increasing impulse buying – all of which will make for healthier profits both short-term and long-term.

It is all about perception. Various visual merchandising techniques can help change the way your customer views your offering. It helps to encourage more passing trade, with inviting aesthetics, displays highlighting star products, and a functional, comforting aura. At the same time, visual merchandising works long-term to make customers become more loyal to your brand. When they see a certain colour or combination of colours, they will think of your business, which will encourage them to return to see what’s new.

As Indeed.com puts it, “Visual merchandising increases sales and helps retail businesses to grow and it improves the shopping experience for the customer, encouraging them to return.”

Elements of visual merchandising

There are lots of visual merchandising tools available to every retailer. They include:

• 1. A heavy focus on colour: Good aesthetics relies primarily on the right combination of colours. They should complement each other while promoting your brand, and speaking to the likes of your customers.
• 2. Visual merchandising displays: The more, the better. Quantzig.com recommends a circular layout, rather than a traditional aisle format. This means customers can work their way around the store while being exposed to as many displays as possible.
• 3. Telling a story: Stories are irresistible to customers, and they can make a display easier to understand. If a customer can picture themselves inside a story, they then find it difficult to imagine themselves without the products that have helped to create that tale.
• 4. Filling empty spaces: You can’t place items too high, as customers won’t be able to reach them, but that unused wall space is great for visual merchandising, meaning you can encourage more sales without wasting a single cm! Hang signs to indicate what is below, signs that let customers know what offers are on, or just a nice big, bright shop logo.
• 5. Adding a focal point: The great thing about a circular layout is that the centre lends itself perfectly to being a focal point. This is where you can place your biggest, best visual merchandising displays, boosting sales of any items lucky enough to be a part of them.
• 6. Landscaping: This is an effective way of making each item stand out so that your customer misses nothing. According to mvix.com, landscaping “is an essential technique for capturing shoppers’ interest. This strategy involves the elevation of products as ‘prime offerings’ to make them stand out. Landscaping gives retailers creative freedom as they can work with three dimensions: lateral, longitudinal, and vertical. You can work with asymmetrical arrangements to create movement and product flow. Symmetrical layouts are easier to do, and they will help customers to experience your entire offering.”
• 7. Lighting: Getting the lighting right is key to creating a warm, welcoming atmosphere in your store. Too harsh, and customers won’t want to come into the store. Too low and they won’t be able to see the items properly. You can play it safe with lighting that falls somewhere in between, or you can play with muted colours that will enhance your brand image.
• 8. Playing with textures: You can add interest to a colour scheme by using different textures to grab attention. Even if your brand is all about muted tones, textures can draw the eye and make people more excited about your products.
• 9. Getting the décor right: The fixtures, fittings, and furnishings you use are so important. They should work with your visual merchandising so that they complement your store, rather than standing out like a sore thumb. Luckily, this is something Valentino’s Displays is incredibly knowledgeable about, so don’t hesitate to ask for help!

Visual merchandising for business

Whatever visual merchandising techniques you incorporate into your store, you need to make sure that everything works in harmony. Ask yourself if your current offering would be enough to entice you into your store. You could ask friends and family what they think about how your store looks or give questionnaires to passers-by.

Nibusinessinfo.co.uk has some great ideas you can use to measure the impact of your visual merchandising, so you know for sure what is working and what is not. However it is important to also remember that you need to switch it up regularly, so you’ll need to put new things to the test all the time.

Let Valentino’s source for you!

And when you need new retail supplies to work with your merchandising efforts, you know exactly where to come! We have everything you need under one online roof. And, on the off-chance, if you can’t find exactly what you are looking for, we will find it, or make it, for you!