Improving Retail Displays

Sometimes a display looks nice, but for some reason it just isn’t effective. If you are dissatisfied with your retail displays, or if you’re just curious about how to make them better, then ask yourself what needs do your displays fulfill. Customers have quite a few things in mind when they shop. Some are subconscious and others are not. It is your job as the store owner, merchandiser or manager to make sure that you are making the customer feel at ease by hitting these major areas of concern.

Customers essentially have to trust a retailer before they will buy something. You are making promises to them before they even walk into the store. This is why your store should be set up to target certain shoppers and turn others away. You’re promising that if these things appeal to you, then you will find things inside that you will like.

For example, if you have a dark store front with big heavy doors, then customers can assume that you have high priced inventory inside. If you have lots of lights and huge signs, they can expect to find good deals and low prices. Mannequins can certainly help you here. Use them in your store window, not only to show customers what clothing you offer, but to help set the mood.

Mannequins are great assets when it comes to communicating to customers. If set up effectively, they can show customers how certain clothes can make them feel. They help customers to immediately imagine themselves in the clothes and how that would make them feel. This kind of prepares their minds for shopping, having them subconsciously consider things that they wouldn’t have before.

You can also use mannequins to handle the social aspect of buying clothing. If you have more than one mannequin interacting or showing some sort of emotion to each other, then customers will instantly imagine how their friends or peers will view them if they are wearing the same thing.

Once inside the store, you can continue to impact how a customer thinks. This can be difficult if you simply have garment racks filling the whole store. A more effective method of retail display is to use slatwall or gridwall to display your items.

Slatwall can be used to make all of your merchandise not only fit into a small area, but face outward so that each item gets your customers’ full attention. It also raises things up to eye level or higher so that merchandise can be easily seen from anywhere inside the store. You can use mannequin forms or mannequin torsos to display how items look when worn directly on your slatwall. Finally, slatwall panels help you to create displays in interesting areas of the store where you normally wouldn’t have room for a clothing rack.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, slatwall and slatwall panels. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.