Like many retail businesses, you might be concerned with your ‘sales per square footage’ metric and looking for ways to make your retail space more optimised and effective.

Visual merchandising is much more than the process of making your stock look good on the store floor, it’s a way to increase your conversion rate and achieve maximum revenue. It’s about organising your stock in the most productive and visually appealing way to encourage customers to make a purchase.

Now, you might not be the most creative person, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fantastic looking displays for customers. Here are a few tips from us:

Create a display that seems natural

People want to see your products in an environment that seems familiar to them, which when you think about it should be easy. For example, if you’re trying to promote tools you might set up a small workshop display in your store and scatter the tools naturally across a workbench. This way you can encourage customers to pick up and look at the tools properly, you could even go as far as to spread some wood shavings to give it that real workshop aesthetic.

Look for inspiration online

Not every idea has to be totally original, and the chances are that someone has already done it. There are loads of places you can look online for some inspiration on visual merchandising. Try Pinterest, Creative Window or Retail Design Blog, for example.

Observe the rule of three

Many visual merchandisers use the rule of three in their designs. The idea is simple, when creating a display stick to three products and arrange them side by side, no more, no less. Any more products and the display can become overcrowded and uninteresting, any less and it can look like a bit of a lonely, boring display. Choose products that suit each other and may be bought often as a trio.

Pay attention to the lighting

It’s no good having a great display if it’s in some dark corner of your retail space where people won’t think to look. Make sure your display has plenty of lighting, ideally natural light if possible as this will show off your products the best.

Visual merchandising is something that takes time, start with something simple and work your way up from there. You will soon see sales of these products increase!