The main purpose of exterior designs of retail stores is to attract potential or existing customers to enter the store and make purchases. But what about interior retail design? The interior design welcomes your customers, guides them through the store, encourages them to interact with your items, and inspires them to buy. This makes interior design equally or more essential than exterior designs.
The interior design and layout of your store communicate significant information to your customers about the business. This helps maximize sales and customer satisfaction while at the same time minimizing expenses. The interior design of your store should be comfortable, convenient, and inviting to all your customers. This post puts together the basic elements to consider to make the most of your retail interior design. Keep reading to learn five basics you should know!
1. Use Color Wisely
Customers connect with colors more than they realize. In fact, 50% of first impressions are dependent on color. Although a vibrant store can design a bright, positive shopping experience, too many colors can be overwhelming to consumers and make them leave your store immediately after they enter. Sensory overload makes it challenging for consumers to focus on your products and make a purchase. The customers will also not come back if they don’t love your store’s aesthetics.
To avoid this, carefully incorporate color into the interior design by considering the psychology of colors. For instance, black, common in men’s clothing stores, indicates classiness and authority. Blue, common in banks, communicates security, calmness, and trust, while red grabs attention and persuades impulse purchases. If you’re not sure which colors are the best for your business, you may want to seek the services of interior fit-out experts like Dimension Shop Fitters to help you out.
2. Update Your Visual Merchandising Regularly
Visual merchandising, also known as product displays, boost sales. Customers can visualize your products in a staged living room, a hanging plant, or dressed mannequin, which helps them decide to buy. Displays also offer interactive shopping experiences and provide simple opportunities for content creators to share photos of the store’s pleasing displays on social media.
The common displays for retail interior design include checkout displays, window displays, mannequins, and point of purchase displays. To aesthetically engage your retail interior design and get new products in front of your customers, update your visual merchandising regularly.
3. Slow Down Your Customers While In The Store
Modern customers are super busy and often shop in a hurry. The retail interior design’s task is to slow down customers and increase the time spent in your store. Having customers slow down encourages them to browse the store and potentially find something new.
Encouraging this type of shopping depends on your store’s layout and the experience created in the store. The layout dictates where and how you’ll display your products and where to design the customer’s pathway. Different retail store design layouts include loop, herringbone, grid layouts, or free flow. The loop layout is effective for creating customer pathways through the store.
It also makes sense to position a huge, eye-catching display at the entrance and place your flagship products at the front.
4. Mark Customer’s Pathways Around The Store
Retailers should know where they want their customers to pass around the store. They should know which products lead and where the customer’s final destination should be. The store’s interior design should make the journey clear to customers. If you’ve ever visited food retailers, they mostly place necessities like milk and eggs at the back of the store, meaning the customer has to browse through other goods to reach what they need. Department stores also use this approach by placing kids’ staff on the top floor so parents can pass through other sections and potentially select additional products.
Retailers should also use this strategy to guide their customers around the store to increase dwelling time and potentially increase additional purchases.
5. Be Creative And Innovative
Since consumers turn to e-commerce to buy products, retailers need to make their store designs more interactive and enticing. Focusing on the physical touch that e-commerce lacks is crucial for keeping your shop busy. The best way to accomplish this is to focus on the interior design through bold signage, great lighting, innovative shelves, ceiling, flooring, and good color choices.
Conclusion
There you go! We hope the above basic elements will help welcome, inspire and encourage customers to make purchases from your store. Retail store interior design is about creating a good customer experience and displaying your best products.
