Retail design is so important. It serves many purposes including your branding, competition with other stores, sales, and the customer’s impression. Even your pricing is dependent on a retail design that matches. We’ve compiled some tips from retail design experts to give you some things to think about when setting up your retail store with effective displays and a preferred layout.

1) Branding: Your layout should reflect your style and communicate your brand image to your customers. If you are a large retailer that offers bulk goods at wholesale prices, then big, tall displays with bulk items are great. If you’re a smaller boutique focused on high end customers looking for organic and eco-friendly products, then you need to make things feel more subdued and focus in on a few key brands.

2) Competition: Competing with other stores around you is always a challenge. Make yourself stand out by carefully planning the feel of your store. Instead of trying to offer a wider variety of products to appeal to more customers, try to hone in on a specific niche market and outdo the competition in that one area. People shop at specialty and smaller stores when they’re looking for something specific. Make sure that your layout and signage communicates that you are the one they’re looking for.

3) Ease of Shopping: Your store layout can make your customers feel rushed, cramped, discouraged and inconvenienced if it’s not done properly. You want to make sure that your displays are dynamic and easily figured out. A customer should be able to scan the room and have a good idea of what you offer. Use lighting techniques to spotlight certain areas and draw attention to what makes you different.

4) Price: If your store looks like a bargain basement type of store but your prices are high, customers are not going to pay the price that you want. Making things look special and appealing gives you license to ask for more money, because people will expect it. They associate quality with presentation and are willing to pay more for items that they feel are of a higher quality, even if they have nothing else to base their assumption on. If your prices match your store’s layout, feel, and caliber of display, then customers will happily pay what you ask because they’ll see that the prices match what they assumed the price would be.

5) Presentation: This is your most important thing to consider. A store can look beautiful, have great lighting, and be very welcoming to your target market. However, if your racks and shelves are “hiding” your merchandise, you’ll be out of luck. People don’t just want to see that you have jeans, shirts, shoes, and purses. They want to know brands, quickly pick out new arrivals, and see what the new styles look like when coordinated with other products. Use slatwall panels and slatwall displays to get your merchandise up to eye level where customers can see them. You can quickly and easily produce focal points on the slatwall system by using slatwall accessories and mannequin forms. Make sure that you have displays that draw the customer around the store, not just in and then back out.