THE PROVEN WAY TO MAKE YOUR STORE'S DISPLAYS WORK FOR YOU AND YOUR CUSTOMERS

Despite the pressure of online shopping, research shows the majority of customers still value the in-store experience – provided that retail experience gives them what they want. According to leading research from Accenture:

Despite the increasing trend of consumers using smartphones to research products (and pricing) in a store, 61% of the consumers we surveyed cited that they still value or highly value asking a sales associate for product recommendations.

This puts added importance on retail displays, shop fittings and how you lay out your store and Mills Display has more than 25 years’ experience of providing exactly the right point-of-sale displays and fixtures to give your store the right environment for this new breed of customer.

The key to giving sales associates the right information to help customers as well as giving customers easy point of contact to the product is having a merchandising strategy for cabinets, racks and portable display stands.

This strategy falls into four categories:

1. The display must give initial impact for a product – capturing the customer’s attention in that important first few seconds. The University of Otago is currently carrying out research using eye-tracking glasses to show how we shop, and initial results show stores can “train” customers by how products are displayed.

2. The display should provide product and technical information but also do this in an easily digestible form, stripped of jargon. To do this stores need to understand the customers’ basic queries about a product and provide simple solutions.

3. The display should turn your point-of-sale into an information source to give sales associates key facts and customers that in-store experience.

4. The display gives customers a chance to handle and interact with your products – often the way to break down barriers around purchasing.

It’s quite clear that although online research is now a vital part of a customer’s retail experience, it is no substitute for the “human touch” for the majority of shoppers.

And in stores with multiple brands and products, shelf displays and retail shop fittings become the means for sales staff to access information and help make sales with confidence and authority.

In the very latest research from Ogilvy, understanding how customers now expect to be able to move seamlessly from online to in-store experiences puts the stress on how stores use their displays:

It is not a simple case of the shopper being more enabled by the digital-physical convergence – they have actually changed as a result of these new technologies.

By choosing the right physical environment for your store’s customers you are giving them the best possible experience and the greatest chance to make an informed decision about a purchase. Check out the Mills Display website or get in touch to take steps towards improving your retail environment. http://millsdisplay.co.nz/