Giving a Retouch to your Store Layout and Visual Appeal
Have you ever walked into a store and felt something good about it? It could also be true the other way around. Try to recall an instance of each from your recent memory. Could you recall or attribute why you felt the way you did? Even before going into the detailing, customers do sense a vibe emanated by the layout design and visual appeal in retail stores. These two elements help create a superior first impression, create interest, and incentivise to engage at a deeper level. Layout design and visual merchandising are not just for space optimisation or maximising sales but to first give customers a servicescape that is rich in terms of delivering a delightful and meaningful sense of being present in that place for exploration and shopping. What often evades our attention is that customers also get accustomed to the usual. This necessitates tweaking things around from time to time. In this blog, we attempted to showcase how you can do this by revisiting a set of old and new strategies from a contemporary perspective.
Retaining the Simplicity
The simpler forms of layout types offer easier and greater flexibility in exercising visual merchandising. For example, the grid layout presents a simple and organised appearance on top of which enhancing visual appeal is a tad easier than over other complex or hybrid layout types.
Simpler layout formats also create the scope for space optimisation by allowing narrow gaps between aisles while appearing strategic and organised. Ease of navigation must not be ignored though while trying to strike a balance between visual merchandising and optimisation of space and inventory.
Simpler layout formats also allow hosting a mixed array of merchandise without appearing messy. It is always easier to find stuff in organised places. It helps in product placement, shelve management, and improving overall operational efficacy.
Simplicity is a desirable trait and store layout planning and visual merchandising play a big role in lending this trait to a retail servicescape.
Premium Feel with Elegance
For the last several years, there has been a growing trend among retail brands to emphasise the element of premium in store design and layout with the due stress on visual appeal as well. Offering a premium and elegant environment has become a standard strategy especially, among renowned brands. The underlying idea is to offer a premium shopping environment to customers. At YRC, we believe things are likely to remain the same in 2025 with an increasing number of retail brands and businesses focusing on aesthetics, ambience, visual merchandising, expert planogram, customer orientation, staff training, and the use of modern retail technologies.
Display Strategy
Empty shelves and messed up product placement are sores to the eye. While the need for organised display is not refuted by any retailer the reality can be quite different. One of our team members recently came across a shoe sale by a retail footwear enterprise. Despite the attractive discounts, the business was not able to generate enough sales – the sale has been going on for almost a month. Price could be one of the reasons but something else was also at play here – it was the display of the products that were on sale. The products were kept on make-shift display tables placed randomly and scattered all over the available space giving the appearance of a pile of rubble. Those were pricey premium products. The view was not quite inviting. The store’s target segments are customers from relatively high-income brackets. Customers who come for a premium shopping experience may not have a fulfilling visit. The lesson here is that retailers should emphasise having a display strategy that meets the requirements and expectations of their target customers while meeting the operational requirements.
Product Placement
Product categorisation or assortment should stand out as distinguishing features in retail stores. For example, complementary products or products that are purchased together or products of similar nature should be stacked on the same or adjoining shelf or rack. This makes the buying decisions easier for customers. It reduces the chances of omissions in shopping. Even if you own a small store where you sell from the counter, this could be achieved by strategic positioning of products.
Keeping Room for Snacking
Not many supermarkets or departmental stores consider the idea of offering food services. The in-house snacking facility is a significant addition to value propositions and also improves customer attraction and engagement. These spaces can be small with a limited seating capacity and for light to medium food options. Think of it as grocery shopping with QSR-like services. In convenience store layout planning, YRC stresses the significance of keeping room for innovations that enhance value propositions.
Quick Shopping
Many renowned retail brands (especially, in the grocery and convenience store business) have used the strategy of positioning themselves as places for quick shopping. It portrays an energetic persona highlighting quick and easy shopping or shopping on the go – something that aligns very strongly with today’s eCommerce style of shopping. This strategy also plays a role in optimising impulse buys in convenience stores or other forms of the grocery business like supermarkets or departmental stores. Store layout planning and retail visual merchandising strategies cannot be kept out of the loop here.
Extensive Variety of Shelves
Today, most retailers tend to go for hybrid layout formats for their stores. Hybrid layout formats open up the possibility of and also necessitate the use of varied styles of shelves and racks. For example, it is common to see fruits and vegetables being displayed on slatted slaves. These shelves allow better air circulation and drainage. At the same time, it also helps create a visual appeal emphasising freshness. The level of technology may differ but this is also how fruits and vegetables are displayed in open markets. In devising supermarket store layout planning solutions, YRC underscores the impact of different aspects of store layout planning on the shopping experience.
Spic and Span
Like simplicity, cleanliness is another desirable trait. When it comes to shopping, customers do expect cleanliness inside and outside stores. And when it comes to retailing in today’s world, anything short of ‘spotless’ may be a red flag from the customer’s perspective. Cleanliness is a crucial part of creating a strong and attractive visual appeal in retail stores. Experienced convenience store consultants would agree that there must be robust SOP-based systems in place to consistently maintain high levels of cleanliness in retail stores. The size and scale of the store are immaterial here.
About Your Retail Coach
YRC is a retail and eCommerce consulting brand with a scaling international footprint. With over ten years of experience, YRC has worked with 500+ clients in more than 25 sectors with a success ratio of over 94%.
To speak to a professional convenience store business consultant, feel free to drop us a message and we will shortly reach out to you.
FAQs
How to approach store layout and visual merchandising to enable an on-the-go shopping experience for customers?
On-the-go shopping or pit-stop shopping is a fast-emerging trend in the supermarket retail space. It necessitates some changes in layout and visual merchandising. Briefly exemplified below are two strategies for consideration to be implemented after making due improvisations:
Product Categorisation and Placement Based on Purchase Combinations and Consumption Process
Quick-moving or fast-selling items of typical everyday purchase and consumption like milk, bread, and eggs could be placed on shelves which are on the perimeters of the store for a quick and meaningful shopping journey. For example, those who are looking for these items in the morning should not be made to traverse through the entire store. They are there for a specific purchase.
Products of similar nature like tea and coffee or different types of rice or pulses could be placed on the same or adjoining shelves. It helps in decision-making and obliterates the chances of omission. Even if they are not carrying a shopping list, having products that way does the job of a reminder service. It makes shopping more meaningful and speedy.
Use of Signages for Quick Navigation
Right after entering a supermarket store, customers should be able to easily decide which zone or aisle they should go to. This decision is often based on customer purchase intent. For example, all products that require shelving in fridges and freezers (desserts, aerated beverages, butter, etc.) should be allocated a separate zone and there should be signages for every such zone created in bold. These signages should be visible from near the entry space.
For any doubt or professional assistance, feel free to let us know.
How should a supermarket business frame its omnichannel strategy?
Many people limit the idea of omnichannel to having both online and offline sales channels. As experienced omnichannel consultants for supermarket businesses, we maintain that omnichannel is about securing a seamless shopping experience for customers cutting across online and offline channels. Knowing how to approach building an omnichannel strategy provides almost all the meaningful cues for identifying what it must entail.
In omnichannel consulting, the first thing we do or recommend is mapping the existing (offline) customer journey. This is to be followed with the mapping of the intended shopping journey (online). When we say customer journey, it starts from advertising to post-sales customer support. The customer journey begins at the point where customers first come in contact with a brand. It could be social media posts or search engine results or any other intended point of contact. Then, as the journey progresses, there comes multiple touchpoints touching both online and offline channels. Whether a customer starts with a social media post or pays a visit to the store for the time with a friend, from that moment onwards, the shopping journey for the customer must not discriminate between online and offline channels (of course, except where it is not possible, e.g. delivery of goods has to be offline). Similarly, if a customer wants to raise a complaint, he/she need not be compelled to visit the store to do so and there should be an option to raise a complaint over a call or the store’s mobile app or its website.
For any doubt or professional assistance, feel free to let us know.
What are some innovative ways to improve supermarket customer experience?
Since the question emphasises innovation, we will not cover points that are already well-established. From our stint in formulating supermarket CX strategies and solutions, here are some solutions that supermarket business owners might find innovative:
Premium Shopping Environment
Today, almost all big-format retail brands are switching to offer a premium shopping environment to their customers. When has gleam and glitter failed to impress? In the world of retail, this is predominantly becoming a standard and refusing to level up may hurt a business from a competitive perspective.
Go Digital, Go Omnichannel
Going digital could be many things but for starters, it could be something as simple as having an online presence on popular search engines (that is also the bare minimum). Then there are other advanced forms of digital transformation like ARS, retail analytics, eCommerce-enabled sales platform (app/website), etc. These tools and platforms help gain meaningful insights, become digitally accessible, and directly influence the customer shopping journey as well. The omnichannel strategy integrates the online and offline shopping journey as one – giving customers the option of using the features of both channels at their convenience.
Author Bio
Rupal Agarwal
Chief Strategy Officer
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