by Grace Butland

Show and Sell
Tips for creating displays that attract customers and Increase sales

Customer-friendly displays can help increase gallery sales. At Seekers Glass Gallery in Cambria, Calif., work is accessible enough for customers to see it up close. Pedestals are not overcrowded, lighting is good, and the colors of walls and displays do not distract from the work. This helps make the craft being sold the focus of attention for customers.

If you have a glass-front gallery in a high-traffic area, you already know the importance of an attractive window display to lure customers. But effective displays are equally important on the floor of your gallery. The way merchandise is displayed determines how customers move through gallery space and whether they make a purchase or leave empty-handed.

Because good visual presentation is so vital to retailing, I asked two experts — Jackie George and Brandy Rainey — for their thoughts on what makes effective displays. George is a retail trainer, editorial director, marketing strategist and author of the book “Display for Profits.” Rainey is executive director of the National Association of Visual Merchandisers (NAVM).

Winning formulas

Many retailers concentrate on window and store-front displays because that’s what brings customers through the door. However, the longer people stay in the store, the more likely they are to buy. Good visual merchandising throughout the space keeps customers interested and draws them into every corner.

How can you achieve that level of effectiveness? “Take a look at your business and what you want to be known for,” suggests Rainey. “Do you want to be recognized as the shop that carries a particular artist’s work, or the store with a great variety of gifts, or the shop with all the colorful artwork? Once you have determined what you want to be known for, you can merchandise accordingly.”
When planning your layout and merchandising displays, keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Give your customers room to move. The Americans with Disabilities Act specifies that all fixtures must be, at minimum, 3 feet apart. Rainey suggests that you stand at the front entrance to your store, take a look at the interior and make sure that fixtures are balanced with at least a 3-foot walkway around them. This not only gives your aisles a clean look, but also makes it easier for your customers to shop.
• Keep it within reach. Space beyond a customer’s reach should never be devoted to display, says George. “Pick a height that is easy for the customer to shop from and high enough to maximize selling space — about 7 feet,” advises Rainey. (This imaginary line is called the “snap line.”) You can fill the space above the snap line with coordinating graphics or textured wallpapers, or leave it blank — just make sure whatever fills that space does not detract from the merchandise.
• Make your back wall a magnet. “Have merchandise on the top row for visual impact and then duplicate the product lower down where the customer can easily reach it,” suggests Rainey. She recommends grouping similar products together for maximum back-wall impact.
• Use lighting effectively. Proper lighting is critical to leading your customers through the store. Direct traffic by aiming spotlights at important areas, suggests Rainey.
• Mark prices clearly and consistently. Price-point signs are fine when you have multiples of an item, but be consistent. If one piece of pottery has a price tag, then they all should have price tags. “Make it easy for the customers so they don’t have to ask,” says Rainey.
• Use color creatively. “Organize by color from left to right, since that’s how we typically read things,” Rainey advises. She recommends following the color wheel, moving from yellow to orange, to red, to purple, to blue, to green, to gray, to white, to black.
• Create interest. Displays made up of an odd number of items — three, five, seven, etc. — are more interesting than even numbers, says Rainey. George notes that few people can walk past a mirror without sneaking a peek. “Use this common human quirk to your advantage by placing a mirror in your display, behind or under the product, and stop traffic,” she advises.

RESOURCES

Check out the National Association of Visual Merchandisers Web site (www.visualmerch.com) for more information about professional visual merchandisers. To order a copy of “Display for Profits” ($25 U.S. + S&H), contact Jackie George at (310) 548-9065 or by e-mail at: jackiegeorge36@hotmail.com.

Common mistakes

If your displays aren’t getting the desired results, you may be making one of these common mistakes:

• Poor lighting. According to George, lighting is the single most important and most misused component of display. Spend a little extra time and possibly increase your budget for proper lighting. Customers won’t buy what they can’t see.
• Too much or too little. Cramming areas full of product to take maximum advantage of display space can make a shop look like a disorganized mess. “Although there are no hard and fast rules about how much to present in one area, remember that less is more,” says George. On the other hand, half-filled shelves and displays create a negative image. When your stock decreases, rearrange the displays to fill in the space.
• No theme. “Every display needs a selling message,” says George. “A theme pulls together the ideas, the products and the services you sell.” Some examples of commonly used display themes are household settings (table settings, living room settings, bedroom displays, etc.). Others can be seasonal (spring, winter), holiday-related, grouped by style (rustic, contemporary, whimsical) or by media, and so on.
• Misuse of props. Be creative with your display themes, but remember, “The emphasis should be on the item that is for purchase,” cautions Rainey. “It’s easy to get carried away with a holiday display and forget that the purpose of the display is to sell merchandise, not the props you bought to create the display.”
• Misuse of color. Misusing color can upset the visual balance of a display, says George. Warm colors (yellows, oranges and reds) visually push items forward; cool colors (blues, greens and purples) make items recede and can make a display area look larger.
• Missing message. “Signage will sustain the interest of a passerby a little longer and increase your sales,” says George. When basic information, such as price and explanation of the product are missing, your display is incomplete.
• Overly busy back walls. “When properly executed, the walls at the back of your gallery provide a visual invitation for a customer to walk through the entire store,” says Rainey. Back walls with too many things going on are confusing to customers.
• Dirt. “You can create a wonderful display following all the basic principles, and a little dirt will ruin all your efforts,” says George. Dusty props, bits of tape on shelves or windows, lopsided or torn signs, etc., reflect lack of professionalism and do not convey the right message to the customer.
• Static displays. “Nothing has less selling power and is less appealing than a stale, dated display,” says George.

Displays don’t have to be expensive, knock-your-socks-off presentations to be effective. But they must be well planned. “The bottom line to creating an effective display is not creating a pretty presentation,” George reminds us. “The purpose of all displays is sales.”