Planning For Your Busiest Clientele
Everyone tells you you learn a lot as a first-time parent. Within days, I learned how impossible it was to be without Amazon Prime and its Subscribe and Save service. And this is coming from someone who has always taken pleasure from offline shopping.
Needless to say, leaving the house (a part from work reasons) has become quite infrequent and not too enticing. Deciding to go to a shopping area is now for the following three reasons:
Needing to get out of the house for a small trip somewhere “easy” (a.k.a. stroller-friendly malls)
Hearing about a new store or event which is extremely enticing and baby/stroller-friendly
Meeting someone at the mall
During these short shopping trips, most of the time has been whizzing by and admiring window displays to eventually filter down which stops to actually make, considering what will knock off the most off my shopping list at once, and mapping out the most efficient path in my head. This means I need to know the organization of the store, which also means counting on the space planning of the store to match my expectations.
This made me realize that although we’ve been advising everyone to plan the Visual Merchandising of a space for the LAZIEST customer, we should be strategizing for the BUSIEST customer. Because the busy customers are the ones who are actually open to purchasing, but truly put the impact of your retail presentations to the test.
Tips to cater to the busiest clientele:
Tell the most relevant story right away. This means your window displays or storefront sections should feature the reason that shopping the store is significant at that very important. Is it a transition to the new season? A hot product that will make lives easier? A new, unique style that is hard to find elsewhere?
Keep that momentum, which means upon entering the store, they should see that same featured story in the launch areas, or at least the same theme corresponding to it. If you welcome them in with one store and tell a different one in their next steps, you are creating a visual hiccup which would interrupt the momentum.
Zone your space visibly.* The larger the space, or the more products you have, the more overwhelming shopping and exploring will seem, and that’s a key time you would lose your busy (or lazy) customers. Make it easy for them by making the different categories evident at a glance, so they are able to navigate as quickly as possible.
- Group your products logically. This refers to your product adjacencies in each section. You know your products best in terms of which ones you would pair together. Educate your customers on the best “pairings” as well by grouping coordinating products together.
- Sign and label - just enough! Signage is certainly an effective way of communicating, when done right. Ensure that you are including all important information in signage where visual merchandising wouldn’t capture the details. (E.g., pricing, category call-out, prime function, etc.) However, just like showing too much product, if you show too much signage, customers will read even less. Sign whatever is absolutely necessary so you are not showing too much at once. Busy shoppers tend to absorb keywords or headlines at a glance, without stopping to read the whole paragraph.
- BE the busy customer. Always consider what it’s like being in their shoes and what you would need to make the shopping experience as enticing, quick and seamless as possible.
Plan for the busiest customer, and you will be ready for the rest. Counting on customer loyalty and forgiveness creates too much opportunity for the “easy retailers” like Amazon to steal your business.