Shopping Psychology

When you want to pop into a shop and get a pint of milk, do you end up walking out with a basket full of other things you didn’t intend to buy? Supermarkets are brilliant at making us impulse buy, so how do they do it?

There are many different tricks to getting people to buy more than they intend to. Major brands and important, popular items are placed in the centre of aisles, increasing the length of time the shopper is in the shop and making sure they are exposed to as many items are possible.

Displays are everywhere! Not only do supermarkets have long, endless aisles, but even at the ends there are eye catching displays with even more products as are the till areas - so the customer is never not looking at products!

If the shop sells fresh bread, one of the oldest tricks in the book is pumping that freshly-baked smell into the store. It’s often poured out through the ventilation system throughout the entire day to give the illusion that the bread is being baked constantly, giving you the freshest product!

The endless psychology of shopping entices customers to buy more than they ever intended, in clever ways that customers simply don’t notice! 

Choosing Your Shelving

Finding the right shelving for your store is critical for the success of your business, to make sure your customers will have the best shopping experience and buy your products. You need to display your products clearly and efficiently, and to maximise the viewing exposure.

Start the planning by thinking about your products. What will you sell? Will you have heavy products? If so, you’ll need to make sure you have a display unit that can withstand the weight of your heaviest products.

Think about the dimensions of your products. The shape and size of the products needs to be taken into consideration when choosing the right shelving. Will the depth of a shelf be enough for you to stack products or will you need a peg board unit to hang them on? You have many options, so think about what will make your products look good.

The other things to consider include accessibility - how many of a particular item will you be holding? You need to ensure customers can get to your items easily and quickly, so make sure your shelving is adequate for your items.

Magazine Magic!

Magazines have a tendency to end up looking scruffy after they’ve been out for a while, so it pays to look after them and invest in specific magazine shelving to keep them secure and neat.

To prevent them getting damaged, Shelving4Shops sell specific shelving, designed to keep your magazines, stationery and even greeting cards neat and tidy. These units come with eight angled, tiered shelves, with a 470mm wide base, perfect for stacking newspapers. Additional shelves can be purchased and added if needed.

As with all their units, Shelving4Shops offer fully adaptable and adjustable magazine shelves, giving you the flexibility to create versatile and changeable displays. You’ll find the units strong and sturdy, giving you the peace of mind that when you buy, your products will be safely supported with high quality shelving that will last. These wall shelving units come in three different heights: 1.8m, 2.1m and 2.4m

These versatile units can be easily connected to other shelving units, so you can create unique runs or aisles that work for you. You can work these units into your displays to ensure your store flows and customers don’t bunch up where people stop to browse the magazines or cards, which can cause your store to look over-crowded or badly planned.

Storing Cigarettes

When it comes to storing cigarettes, the new rules make it very clear that you need to keep all cigarettes need sliding doors or screens fitted, otherwise the store owner can face hefty fines. To avoid this, make sure your cigarette gantry complies with the rules when it comes to storing tobacco products.

Shelving4Shops offers a cost-effective, high quality cigarette gantry, which features sliding doors as standard - these are easily fitted to make sure you adhere to the law and don’t find yourself getting fined! Each cigarette gantry from Shelving4Shops comes with cigarette pushers and dividers to help you keep stock of your tobacco products. This also enables you to store at least 112 different types of cigarettes with 7 separate, adjustable shelves. The gantry is a compact size and can be wall mounted or put on a shelf meaning it takes up little space behind the counter. Epos strips are fitted to the front of the shelves, allowing you to clearly display the prices of your tobacco products.  

Make sure you choose the right storage products for your store to give your customers the best shopping experience and help your business boom!  

Make The Most Of What You’ve Got

The best floor plans will make the most of your store’s square footage, while creating displays that offer your customers the best shopping experience and give a good impression of your company. It’s worth researching the best floor plan for your type of business, as what is best for a convenience store, for example, may not be the best for a specialist shop.

A diagonal floor plan gives great visibility for both cashiers and customers, and encourages positive traffic flow for a self serve type of shop. Your wall spaces are very much useable, maximising on the space available for both displaying and using signage to help your customers shop and encourage impulse buys.

If you have a more specialist store, then it’s worth putting the effort into making your store look high end and more expensive, conveying the message that you sell exciting, high quality products. Use your space more liberally and look at an angular floor plan, with curves and soft angles to make displays that more focussed on individual products.

If you sell clothing, take a look at geometric floor plans, which are great for creating displays that are “out of the ordinary” without costing you an arm and a leg to set up. You can create feature points and use signage to let customers know where to find what.

For high quality display units, take a look at Shelving4Shops and their great range that will help you set up shop without breaking the bank. We know how important it is to get a great set up on a budget to balance the books, so we sell both new and used units.

Visit our showroom or give us a call to chat over how we can help!

Perfect Planning!

Your floor plan is the foundation of your store, so it’s crucial that you spend time working out what will be best for you and, ultimately, will produce the most sales and gain you the most profit.

You have several options to work with when it comes to floor plans, and Shelving4Shops are always happy to offer help and advice when you’re making those critical decisions. The most common and most efficient layout for smaller businesses is the straight floor plan. Here you have all the fixtures and displays at right angles, making the most of your floor space. Even corners can be successfully used to display your products- and Shelving4Shops has a great range of corner display units!

Straight floor plans accommodate all the major types of display unit, including gondola, wire and slatwall, so you’re options are still wide open when it comes to choosing the right unit for your products. Shelving4Shops have a range of different units which can be customised to work for your business. By carefully planning out your store, you can still work in any feel or theme you want to!

An “angle” floor plan is a bit misleading, as it is more of a “curved” floor plan, using curves to create a more sophisticated and visually diverse feel. This plan ends up with less display room, therefore it’s more commonly used by stores that have less products to sell or require less space, such as a jewellers, for example. Their products do get more emphasis, so this is more for high end retailers.

The mixed floor plan gives you the versatility to use a number of different set-ups, including angular, straight and diagonal. This is ideal for stores that have a variety of different products that need to be displayed with different vibes in different areas. You can highlight different products and create clear sections to your store, as this plan gives you plenty of flexibility.

However you choose to plan your store, Shelving4Shops gives you the ultimate choice in display units and we’re always here to help!

Avoiding Retail Disaster Zones

When a customer enters a shop, it takes a good few steps before they actually start engaging with the store and the surroundings. As important as that first impression is, it’s also important to help the customer “decompress” and take note of your goods. It therefore makes sense to not overload the customer by placing masses of products at the entrance - many of these will only get overlooked anyway as the customer walks past before they’ve started to properly engage. It’s better to place a few key items near the entrance and focus on using lighting and flooring that contrasts the outside environment. This will help the customer slow down and help them adjust to the store, to help them start processing what they see.

Make sure you pay close attention to your checkout area. Too often these are overcrowded and overloaded, so make sure the last impression a customer gets of your store is a good one. Although it’s tempting to place lots of items at the checkout to encourage impulse-buying, if you put too much up there, customers are more likely to ignore the white noise of too many products. Instead place a few well-signed items to get the customer’s attention without blinding them with too much. Make sure your staff have enough space too, while making sure your countertops are of high quality, attractive materials. You don’t want your customers to take away a claustrophobic and cheap feeling when they leave your shop!

When planning your aisles and space, take care to make sure pathways are left unobstructed and gaps are big enough to pass by without a customer accidentally brushing against another. Most people are quite particular about their personal space, and no one wants their intruded upon when they’re shopping and minding their own business! So ensure no one is put off buying by having their personal space invaded when browsing your products.

If you need any further help or advice feel free to visit our website or come and see us at our showroom.