Product, place, price, promotion, people, brand, and experience: New Retail requires much more elements than traditional marketing 4 P´s to be aligned in order to catch customers´ attention and wake up their shopping motivation.

We still live in times when over 80% of retail sales happen within the four walls of a brick and mortar store, therefore visual merchandising keeps being a fundamental for brands.

But what does a great merchandising strategy entail? Having what the customer wants to buy, at the time they want to buy it, at the price they want to pay for it, and in a way, they want to purchase it seems to be the most common definition but getting there is not an easy task.

Visual Merchandising provide the sort of visual navigation and tactile experience through the store that is hard to ever replicate online.

It has a great potential to optimize brands´ in-store product offerings in a way that enhances interactions with customers. Additionally, a proper presentation of merchandise can drive customer excitement and, what is crucial for retail, can increase conversion and double sales. 

Merchandising strategies distinguish retail competitors and can make a retail store a place to be…or not. How branding, packaging, and visual display can leverage foot traffic, sales, or customer loyalty? Let´s analyze the do´s and don’ts of merchandising techniques.

Customers usually demand a brand that appeals to their emotions and fulfils their needs by restocking and placing products on shelves in attractive way helping to create a good brand experience. A proper location, exposition and visualization is merchandising´s hat trick to boost in-store sales. Retailers cannot miss the following rules when building the ultimate visual merchandising journey:

  • The Customer Journey comes first

Clients want to interact with the product and have a valuable brand experience.

  • Develop product’s narrative

In-store journey must come together with a larger narrative to support digital presence and social media.

  • Understand the Customers

Product, packaging and display tactics shall engage, entertain and educate, do they? Data may help you to analyze customers‘ preferences. 

  • Shelf space and premium placement

Consider placing your bestsellers in prime spots and eye-level shelves.

  • Learn retail merchandising trends

Keep an eye on retail merchandising techniques of industry leaders.

  • Avoid out-of-stocks

Empty shelves are never appealing and in order to avoid loss of sales, you need to schedule properly products´ ordering.

Flash sales vendors and marketplaces partnering

As a global beauty guru, Sephora is one of top retailers with large collections of makeup, perfumes and skincare and a great diversity of products.

When shopping at Sephora, customers hunt for their new favorite items, exclusive products and latest releases in beauty category. Sephora combines its business model of exclusive products and interactive displays as its key advantage, so visual merchandising plays an important role in in store brand experience journey.

Beauty hub, segmented areas devoted to ‘only at Sephora’ brands, dedicated space of the store to display new makeup brands, in-store initiatives calling out digitally native, display of the latest, hottest, newest trends are some of Sephora’s attraction builders.

But above all, this beauty top retailer has built its brick-and-mortar advantage on high play-touch-and-feel basis, educating clients on the new products and how best to use them.

Sephora´s brand experience is built on personalization and fun that goes directly into the shopping process. The retailer maximizes merchandising techniques by playing up the strengths of products and brands in different ways at each location in order to drive the customer experience and form personal customer connections.

Its visual´s strategy is made for creative curation displaying Sephora’s ‘favorites’ in hot zones making customers´ choice easier and rewarding. Through its in-store merchandising Sephora plays an active role as beauty advisor to its clients and make it easy for them to purchase. And this is truly the ultimate visual merchandising purpose.