What does your retail shelving do for you? If you think it displays your merchandise neatly and efficiently so that your customers can find it, you'd be right – but it can do a lot more than that. It can actually help you both create and optimize your store layout.
How the right retail shelving helps you create and optimize your store layout
- It gives you a ready-made "infrastructure"
Retail shelving – and especially gondola shelving – can give you a ready-made, changeable "infrastructure" almost instantly. You don't need expensive construction done to create a new layout. In most cases, you can simply start with an open retail space with the desired number of square feet, and use gondola shelving to construct your store layout.
Gondola shelving looks permanent, but it's not. It is sturdy and stationary enough to block off the layout by itself. Set up aisles, departments, a footpath through the store, and other elements just by configuring gondola shelving as you wish. Use gondola wall units, islands, runs, and end caps to create the layout you want – and then change it whenever you need to.
- You can use shelving displays to "guide" customers around your store
Put displays strategically throughout your store that customers will be led to as they shop, from one to the next, to the next, to the next. When you focus customers' attention this way, they will see products they might not otherwise notice, and you can lead them from one department to the next so that they see all you have to offer. For example, placing end caps of new products at the ends of aisles will lead customers through that aisle and to that display – but then onto the adjacent aisle or department, as well.
- You can provide visual "breaks" that in effect force customers to notice your products
It has been shown that when there are long aisles of identical product displayed in uninterrupted fashion, customers will "zone out" so that they don't even notice that it is there.
You don't have to stop stocking your retail shelving this way if you choose, since it is efficient; instead, you can have the best of both worlds by continuing with that type of stocking but providing visual "breaks" in those aisles. You do this by setting up small tabletop displays in the aisles of the products in question. Customers will stop and take a look at what is on display – but then they will also look at what is offered in the aisles.
What makes a good floor layout?
- It guides right
When you customers walk into the store, they are invariably going to want to look left, then go right. Therefore, set your floor layout up so that it utilizes this natural propensity. Your gondola and other retail shelving should in effect construct a "footpath" that will go counterclockwise in circular fashion through the store.
- It ensures that customers can see everything
Your customers should be able to see every sign, department, and strategically placed displays from this footpath. Ideally, use tabletop or similar displays at the entrance to every department; these will draw customers away from the footpath, entice them to browse in the department, and then let them rejoin the footpath when they are ready.
Gondola and other retail shelving options don't just hold your merchandise. Gondola shelving can actually help you create your store layout without having to do a lot of extra construction. Other retail shelving options can actually help customers notice – and buy – the products you have to sell; all it takes is a little know-how and some reconfiguration.
