If your store has started to look old and dated, or if it's become inefficient so that your customers are finding it difficult to shop, it may be time to update your retail store's layout and design. Doing so will give your customers a more enjoyable shopping experience, and enhance your bottom line.
What goes into the process of redesigning a retail store?
Decide what you want your store's new design and layout to be. The retail shelving you choose will have a major impact, since it plays such an important role in your merchandising. Carefully choose your retail shelving so that it blends into or accents your decor, even as it makes your store's layout as efficient as possible. For your customers, it's all about the experience, and aesthetics are key to that. For you, it's about making your customers' shopping experience as enjoyable as possible and to increase efficiency for both you and for them.
- Your design
What's your "atmosphere" going to be? What image do you want to project to your customers? What you do with your store's interior and its exterior or storefront will set the tone.
Before you do anything to actually change your store, start with the concept phase.
Brainstorm. Look at current retail trends in colors, fixtures, different textures and materials for flooring and wall coverings, play with different ideas, etc., and figure out the "look" you want your store to have. How can you change the retail shelving and other fixtures you're using to "freshen" your store's interior? What colors and materials will you use for your retail shelving and for your decor?
What might you do with lighting to enhance the shopping experience? It's often best, for example, to use soft lighting throughout the store rather than the glare of harsh fluorescent lighting for a more pleasing atmosphere, and then to use bright focal lighting trained on displays to showcase wares and entice customers.
How are you going to improve or update your storefront so that customers find it attractive, and will be enticed to come in and investigate further?
- Your layout
Your store's layout is just as important as the aesthetics of your design. Retail shelving and fixtures play a strong role in your store's layout, because with them you can establish a floor plan that actually makes it easier for customers to shop. Map out a main traffic path through your entire store that will "meander" so that your customers won't miss any of your offerings. People naturally first look left and then go right when they enter your store, so the path you set should move counterclockwise in a circular fashion. Make the path wide enough so that people can pass each other easily. Displays should be set up so that they are visible from this path for each department; this gives customers the ability to see the display(s) as they walk, break away to browse, and then return to the path easily so that they can continue shopping.
Implementing your design and layout
Once you've figured out your design and layout "on paper," it's time to implement them. As you buy the materials necessary to make your vision complete, keep in mind that although new flooring/carpeting and wall paint or coverings will be permanent until your next design change, your retail shelving and other fixtures can be set up and broken down quickly and easily, at will; this lets you "update" your store's layout and displays whenever you wish, without having to worry about further investment in updating your design or layout for many years.
