What Goes Where

Now that you have picked your floorplan and decided where your aisles will go, it is time to figure out where you will put your product, displays, and registers. It can be helpful to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Walk through the store with some trusted employees and visualise your space. See what input they have concerning where things should go.

Grab an inventory list and decide where in your store you want various products. Deciding where your product will go can be a big task, which is why we have included some inventory management tips below. Here are a few of tips to make the task more manageable:

• Put necessities near the back. Whether it is underwear in a clothing store or milk in a grocery store, put the items that customers need most near the back. As customers walk to the back of the store to get milk, there is a good chance they might decide to buy cream cheese or yogurt as well, because they must pass by the rest of the dairy section on their way.
• Put seasonal items and new products in prime locations. Put some of your snappiest and most exciting items near the front right of your store. This area is one of your prime locations and is known as a “power wall”. Power walls are those areas of your store that stand out and naturally attract attention. You want to be sure to put interesting and compelling items in these areas. If you are trying to promote a specific item, highlight it on one of your power walls.
• Stock small impulse items near your registers. Items like little toy balls, candy bars, hand sanitiser, and breath mints are great items to have upfront near your register. Although the shopper is coming to the register to pay and leave, you do not want them to stop shopping. Putting items that are appetising and easy to grab near the register encourages your customers to add one or two more items to their cart before they leave.

Transition or Decompression Zone

As you enter your store, the first 1.5m x 4.5m are known as the transition/decompression zone. In most cases, customers are not going to pay attention to displays or fixtures in this area. As they enter your store, they have lots of things on their mind and have often not transitioned into “shopping mode” yet. Leave this area open and inviting, free from merchandise and displays.

Speed Bumps and Break Points

As customers leave the transition zone, you want to slow them down. Most of the time, customers will walk to the right as they enter your store, so take that into account. Fixtures/displays in these areas are known as speed bumps or break points, because they act in much the same way as a speed bump in a parking lot, slowing customers down and getting them to begin looking at items.

Specialty fixtures that feature hot, new, or seasonal items work great as speed bumps. Customers are drawn to the unique display and slow down to see what has grabbed their attention.

Add Merchandise Outposts

Merchandise outposts are displays/fixtures throughout your store that are near or in an aisle. These fixtures are all about impulse buying. This is where you put things like singing alarm clocks, back massagers, and other similar novelty items. The point is to get your customer to notice something and then decide they cannot do without.

Placing your Register (POS Systems)

Here are a few tips to direct you.

Avoid putting your registers in the front right of your store: Many stores put their registers near the front right of the store. This is a mistake. The front right of your store is your lakefront property, one of the prime sales locations in the store. Keep it available for products.

Place your registers at natural stopping points: You want to put your registers where they will not distract shoppers but still be easy to find when needed. Take a walk through your store with your layout diagram. Where could you see yourself stopping? Once you have identified those areas, you have a good idea where to put your registers.

The front left of your store is a good location: Shoppers naturally turn right when they enter a store and generally loop around the store, leaving on the left side. By placing your register(s) at the front left of your store you catch shoppers when they are ready to pay, without distracting them from their shopping, as they make their way around the store.

Final Shop Floor Planning Tips

The merchandiser ideally works on the “invariant right” principle.

Since most of us are right-handed, it is a common tendency that customers entering into retail store would first go towards the right side of the store. The merchandiser should display the unique and expensive collections on the right side of the store to entice the customers.

The ideal setup of the store should be such that once a customer enters into a store, he has to walk through each and every department.

Within 5 meters of entry a customer should find the first power display.

The shelves should be stocked with the latest trends. The merchandise should be well organised on the shelves according to their size and pattern.

It is the key responsibility of the merchandiser to create an attractive display to pull the customers into the store. Once the customer steps into the store, he would definitely buy something or the other.