internal merchandising strategy - l&h sign company...sense of how much time elapsed is fairly...
Post on 17-Oct-2020
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Internal Merchandising
Strategy
What does Paco know?
Author of
Why We Buy
The Call of the Mall
President, Envirosell
Watched thousands
of people in retail
environments.
And, now a word from Paco
“Banks do a horrendous job with signs
and other in-branch media. Almost none
of it is positioned in a strategic fashion—
it’s just nailed up or dumped wherever
there’s space with no thought given to
what customers will be doing or thinking
about when they come upon the sign or
brochure rack.”
Greet Them At The Door
There’s only one time
when anyone pauses
to study what’s written
there on the door:
when the store is
closed.
The Transition Zone
When I talk to clients they invariably point to our
findings on the transition zone as among our most
meaningful, useful work.
Allowing some space between the entrance of a store
and a product gives it more time in the shopper’s eye
as she approaches it. It builds a little visual
anticipation.
Leave me alone!
Shoppers for the most part ignore flyers
which make the store’s intelligent
marketing plan much less effective than it
should be. It’s futile to try to interfere with
a shoppers’s natural task-oriented
behavior.
If a bank customer is intent on filling out a
deposit slip, she is in no frame of mind to
read a brochure about vacation loans. In-
store media needs to be placed where
shoppers naturally pause in their travels if
it’s to have a fighting chance.
I’m on a mission. Again, when you’re
filling out a deposit slip
or endorsing checks,
you’re concentrating
too hard to think about
anything else. And
once you’ve filled out
the paperwork, you
race to get in line.
Let’s take it slow.
You have to deliver the information the way people
absorb it, a bit at a time, a layer at a time, and in the
proper sequence. If you don’t get their attention first,
nothing that follows will register. If you tell too much too
soon, you’ll overload them and they’ll give up. If you
confuse them, they’ll ignore the message altogether.
They Hate to Wait
It’s a good idea to position signs for shoppers standing in line to pay, but it’s a bad idea if those signs promote merchandise that’s kept in the rear of the store.
In one of the prototype (post office) stores we studied, hanging behind the cashiers were large banners promoting various services. Fourteen percent of customers read those banners, our researchers found, for an average of 5.4 seconds each. Which is pretty good in the sign world. And not unexpected, because when you’re in line at the post office, what else is there to do? The area behind or to the side of the cashiers is almost always the hottest signage real estate
Wait! We have something to say.
Quite simply, a short wait enhances the entire shopping experience and a long one poisons it. But, it’s possible to bend waiting time – to alter how shoppers perceive it. When people wait about a minute and a half, their sense of how much time elapsed is fairly accurate. Anything over 90 seconds or so, and their sense of time distorts.
To bend time: Interaction, human or otherwise: Time a shopper spends waiting after
an employee has initiated contact goes faster than time spent waiting before that interaction takes place.
Companionship: The wait seems shorter if you’ve got someone to talk to. Recognize lone shoppers are the ones who need employee contact the most.
Diversion: Merchandising materials, signage, shoppable racks should be positioned for the second or third person in line.
Another popular form of shopper diversion is, believe it or not, signage. Customers perceive waiting in time as shorter if there are signs to read. Smart retailers view waiting time as a kind of intangible asset—it’s one of the few opportunities when you have your customers standing in one spot, facing in one direction, with nothing much else to do.
A Vast Right-Handed World
Because American shoppers
automatically move to the right, the front
right of any store is its prime real estate.
That’s the one to take advantage of how
people move.
All shoppers reach right, most of them being right-
handed….So, if your store wishes to place something into
the hand of a shopper; it should be displayed just slightly to
the right of where he or she will be standing.
A Vast Right-Handed World
Guilty?
Five minutes from my office is a branch of Chase Manhattan Bank where you can find this merchandising innovation: a round table covered by the cheapest blue plastic table cloth you’ve ever seen, atop which were tossed some brochures for car loans and mortgages, joined by a TV monitor, once intended perhaps for showing in-branch videos but now unused and completely covered by a blanket of dust.
Change it up.
If the average customer comes
every two weeks, then your
window displays need to be
changed that often, so they’ll
always seem fresh and
interesting. Here’s another
example of how design and
merchandising must work hand
in hand. If windows are made so
they are easy for employees to
get into the display will be
changed more often than it it’s a
pain in the neck.
I can’t read that.
I still can’t read that.
I said, I can’t read that. With age, three main ocular events occur meaning you
can no longer focus on small type, (it) changes how you perceive color, and the world looks dimmer than it once did.
Readers want bigger text. Readers want 12 points or larger.
By 2025, anything smaller than 13-point type will be a form of commercial suicide.
The yellowing of the aging cornea means that certain subtle gradations of color will become invisible to a large part of the population. We’re going to have to see a lot more black, white and red and a lot less of any other hue.
All print will have to be bold and high-contrast—dark colors on white (or light) backgrounds.
Hey KIDS!
If a store is somehow unwelcoming to children, parent-shoppers will get the message and stay away.
That children can be counted on to be enthusiastic consumers (or co-consumers) as long as their needs have been considered.
If the parent’s sustained close attention is required (by say, a car salesman or bank loan officer) then someone must first find a way to divert the attention of a restless, bored child.
We did a study for Wells Fargo a few years ago showing that 15 percent of all those entering its branches are under seven years old.
“What’s your most effective selling tool?” we asked a loan officer there. She reached in her desk and pulled out a lollipop. She said it could usually be counted on to buy her two minutes of uninterrupted face time with a parent, all she needed.
What did you say?
The sales people would load shoppers down with literature but fail to give them folders.
There were plenty of brochure racks but no brochures, which is a problem.
Empty literature racks, give shoppers the (correct) impression that details don’t get taken care of in this place of business.
One sided posters were taped to the exterior and interior windows, meaning that shoppers frequently found themselves staring at blank white rectangles.
For Example
This branch has a flyer facing the outside of the door, but
the inside is empty. You get the picture.
Banker’s Hours vs. Consumer
Hours
What do banks do wrong? Name another
store open only from 9 am to 5 pm
Monday to Friday. Yet banks still think of
branches as unwanted costs rather than
opportunities to meet customers face-to-
face and finds ways—income generating
ways to serve them.
Meet your goals.
Move your desk.
In a bank, the desk arrangement tells a great deal about the relationship between you two. He or she is on one side of the desk, you’re on the other, and the computer monitor screen, which displays all the most intimate facts of your financial life, faces toward the banker and away from you.
We learned an important lesson from HFC Bank in Great Britain: The closing rate of loans goes up, and the time required to close them goes down, when banks and customers sit next to each other rather than face-to-face over a broad expanse of desktop or table.
Conestoga Merchandising
Kiosk Poster Holder Brochure
holder
Kiosk
Take the next step:
Contact L&H Signs for a FREE
assessment of your bank merchandising
sales@lhsigns.com
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