Store design - a difference maker

Uncluttered store design

A great deal of time, money and brainpower is exercised by retail think-tanks, with regard to store design in an savvy attempt to make the unwary shopper spend more cash than he would have otherwise. The question is: Do these changes in store design make that much of a difference? 

The old adage is this: right product, right time, right customer and you have yourself a probable sale. Another is that a decent product will sell in a poor environment, but a poor product in a good environment, and the results are to the contrary.

These could be true, but what retailers are trying to devise with their store designs are a merger of a sell-able product and a good environment, so to maximise their selling potential. Good products will always sell, but put these in a good format and retailers anticipate they can add to their profits.

The key isn't to stack products up high or unnecessarily litter the shelves and aisles with a gluttony of products, but to enhance a customers experience by great lay-out and clear messages.

"You want to maximise the value of your shelves. But there’s a point where the pile-it-high ethos doesn’t actually increase the value of what you are selling," said Jim Thompson, managing director at design consultancy 20/20.

This sentiment is echoed by Jeff Kindleysides, managing director of design consultancy Checkland Kindleysides, who explains that clarity is the best approach to utilising sales. "An edited choice is probably more powerful than an unedited wider choice that’s very difficult to read. In the mid-market this is very important and it’s about creating real differentiation when many of the products that are sold may be very similar."

It seems like the retailer gets to have his cake and eat it, not least because less stock in the store should mean less manpower. Of course these things are rarely that transparent and straightforward. For one, planning a facade or store design takes time, effort and money, and similarly it takes more staff to maintain a well-managed all-singing-all-dancing store design than simply piling items on top of each other at the end of an aisle.

Aspects of store design

If designed and executed correctly, a store design should create an environment where the customer can navigate easily through the store, with an appropriate quantity of merchandise on display at any particular moment (a fine balance between too much and too little).

The real key to great store design is encouraging customers to look beyond the immediate vicinity they are in, and expand their sight lines to traditionally "cold" areas of a store like the very last or end aisle.

"We tend to start by doing bubble diagrams mapping customers' journeys in a store and looking at the cold and hot areas," says DSGi head of store design Michael Dykes. "In terms of layout there are cold and hot areas in a store."

Curry's have overcome "cold" areas in some branches by putting the most desirable goods like televisions at the back of the store, forcing the customer to navigate through the rest of the store in order to get to the seemingly desirable items.

With a vast number of products available and a lot of competition between differing retailers, having a user-friendly store design is really essential to attracting customers and in effect, steering them unwittingly around the store. The real skill of it from a design prospective is having displays and store lay-outs designed in such a way that the customer is oblivious to the journey they are being taken on.

Ross Densley

Ross Densley is a graduate from Bath Spa University, and has freelanced for several magazines ranging across a section of topics such as animation, business, film and lifestyle. When Ross is not working he writes and edits his own satirical website.

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