22nd December 2020
Due to the quality of being highly visual, humans pay attention to designs and details. That is why if you want other people to pay attention to what you want to show them, you are going to have to make it visually appealing and attractive.
In this article, we will discuss some merchandise branding tips to help you make your local merchandise brand an attraction for your customers. These tips cover some methods to make both the physical and digital fronts of your business stand out.
Merchandise branding is not all about curating displays and improving visuals. It is more about using various components of your store to create an overall immersive experience.
While designing your business place for merchandize branding, you are going to need to think of the big picture. You will first need to be sure about the overall experience that you want your customers to have. You will also need to think about the feelings that you want them to have towards your brand. Finding answers to these questions will help you craft a retail design that will ultimately help you achieve success in merchandise branding.
Because it is going to be a brick and mortar store for people living in the nearby area, you have to make sure that the overall design of your store reflects the spirit of the neighborhood.
Your best products are like the brand makers for your business, so you will want your customers to see those first when they enter your store. That’s where you are going to have to think about the layout of your business place. See whether your customers move left or right when they enter your store. Based on the direction of the flow of traffic in-store, you can place your best products to lay the first good impression on your customers.
Herb Sorensen, in his book Inside the Mind of the Shopper, states that vehicular patterns on the road may have their influence on the flow of traffic in-store.
That said, you may have to lead your customers right if you are in the US or a country that enforces right-hand traffic. In the UK or Australia, you will need to lead your customers on the left side when they enter your store.
While putting your products on display, make sure to avoid putting a lot of them in the decompression zone, which includes the area around the entrance. Because your customers start to adjust to the environment in this part of the store after stepping in, they are more likely to ignore many items or fixtures.
On the contrary, it is best to display as few items as possible in the decompression zone. Your customers getting to see most of your items after adjusting to the store’s environment is going to complement your merchandise branding efforts.
The idea of attracting your customers to anything and everything may sound quite tempting, but the fact of the matter is that it can confuse them rather than helping them to make a decision for the purchase. That is why you have to create only one focal point.
Whether you are setting up a new window display or putting a new fixture on the show in the middle of the store, be sure to make it align with only one focal point. You can create a focal point with one product, and place other products around it in a strategic manner.
People love using social media on their phones. So whenever they see something attractive, they do not hesitate to take a picture of it and sharing on their timelines. Making your in-store design photogenic is a perfect way to ensure merchandise branding success. You will see many of your customers taking pictures of the inner environment of your store and sharing them over social media.
The first step here is to make sure that your store looks great in person and photos. The best way is to take some pictures of the store and see if they look good enough.
You can even encourage your customers to take photos. You can do it by decorating a space and dedicating it to provide photo-taking opportunities to your customers.
Why would you need to improve the web experience of your local brand when you have so many happy local customers? The thing is, there is no such thing as a local brand these days. Even if you are targeting a local audience, you will have to make sure that they can access information about your business through the internet; and that’s what makes it imperative for you to work on a digital storefront.
In the remaining part of this article, we will discuss some ways to boost your local merchandise brand through online and social media. The role of design in this scenario is as crucial as it is in making your brick and mortar store attractive.
The first impression of your business tends to become a permanent memory. Since most of your consumers are going to find your business online, you have to make sure that your online front is capable of making the first good impression. For effective online merchandise branding, you are going to have to stick with best design practices. The overall web design and the design of your logo play a significant role in this regard.
Remember, a great design that matches the personality of your brand is capable of building the first good impression. And this first good impression is going to persuade your uninterested audience to start taking interest in your brand. It is worth mentioning here that you shouldn’t focus on using everything that looks stylish. It is rather about using design elements that look right.
When someone lands on your website, they only take a few seconds to judge if your site can provide them what they are looking for. You must assume that everyone coming to your site doesn’t have much time to make a fair judgment, and so your website has got only a few seconds to impress that visitor.
The best way is to keep your landing page simple to make it more accessible to everyone. Another reason you would want to stick with a simple brand message and web design is that it makes your website’s homepage more understandable. In other words, it is going to be the first step towards a successful merchandise branding campaign.
While designing your website, you have to make sure that the overall design remains relevant to the personality of your brand. For this purpose, you will need to choose the right colors and patterns. If you are selling products that support minimalism through their design, it will be a wrong approach to make your website design complicated.
Your brand logo holds a key role in merchandise branding. The relevance of your website logo to your brand is more crucial than you think.
While your website can rich in colors and have a design depth, it is not going to make an impact if it is just like the ones in your competition. The best way to attract attention from your potential customers is to make your website unique and attractive. Sure, you cannot deviate from design fundamentals only to make your website look unique. There are so many ways you can build a website that looks unique while sticking to the fundamental design principles.
Your brand logo is the design element that brings your company name in front of your audience. Being a local merchandise brand, you are going to have to avoid using any logo design that prevents you from using your brand name. A clearly readable brand name has to be the feature of the logo design that you are using. It will play a significant role in merchandise branding.
If you want to boost your local merchandise brand, you are going to have to work on the physical and digital fronts to make an impact. Although it may seem a bit hard at the start, you will find it the best way to bring your brand to the attention of a larger audience. A merchandise branding effort involving the offline and online ways of marketing can help local merchandise brands expand their area of operation.